Block-storage service supporting multi-attach

ABSTRACT

A block-based storage system hosts logical volumes that are implemented via multiple replicas of volume data stored on multiple resource hosts in different failure domains. Also, the block-based storage service allows multiple client computing devices to attach to a same given logical volume at the same time. A membership group authority authorizes sequence numbers for a given logical volume and an associated membership group. The members of the membership group ensure that the members are in agreement on the latest sequence number for the given logical volume before responding to read or write requests directed to the given logical volume.

BACKGROUND

The recent revolution in technologies for dynamically sharingvirtualizations of hardware resources, software, and information storageacross networks has increased the reliability, scalability, and costefficiency of computing. More specifically, the ability to provide ondemand virtual computing resources and storage through the advent ofvirtualization has enabled consumers of processing resources and storageto flexibly structure their computing and storage costs in response toimmediately perceived computing and storage needs. Virtualization allowscustomers to purchase processor cycles and storage at the time ofdemand, rather than buying or leasing fixed hardware in provisioningcycles that are dictated by the delays and costs of manufacture anddeployment of hardware. Rather than depending on the accuracy ofpredictions of future demand to determine the availability of computingand storage, users are able to purchase the use of computing and storageresources on a relatively instantaneous as-needed basis.

Virtualized computing environments may provide various guarantees as tothe availability and durability of computing resources. Distributingcomputing resources amongst multiple resource hosts may providedifferent availability and durability characteristics. For example,virtual computing resources may provide block-based storage. Suchblock-based storage provides a storage system that is able to interactwith various computing virtualizations through a series of standardizedstorage calls that render the block-based storage functionally agnosticto the structural and functional details of the volumes that it supportsand the operating systems executing on the virtualizations to which itprovides storage availability.

Current block-based storage systems may attach a single virtual volumeto a single compute instance, but may not function properly whenmultiple computing resources with varied network connections areattached to a shared virtual volume.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a provider network that includesa block-based storage service that supports multi-attach volumes,according to some embodiments.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a provider network that includesa virtualized computing resource service and a block-based storageservice that supports multi-attach volumes, according to someembodiments.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating interactions regarding a read requestand a write request between nodes that implement a logical volume andmultiple clients attached to the logical volume, according to someembodiments.

FIGS. 4A-4C are diagrams illustrating interactions between nodes thatimplement a logical volume, a node that implements a membership groupauthority, and multiple clients attached to the logical volume, whereinthe interactions include a fail over from a primary replica to asecondary replica and the enablement of a replacement secondary replica,according to some embodiments.

FIGS. 5A-5H are diagrams illustrating interactions between nodes thatimplement a logical volume, a node that implements a membership groupauthority, and multiple clients attached to the logical volume, whereina first connection failure does not trigger a transition due to goodhealth of a primary replica node and a second connection failure causesa fail over from a primary replica node to a secondary replica node andthe enablement of a replacement secondary replica node, according tosome embodiments.

FIGS. 6A-6E are diagrams illustrating interactions between nodes thatimplement a logical volume, a node that implements a membership groupauthority, and multiple clients attached to the logical volume, whereindifferent clients drive different nodes to assume a role of primaryreplica node and a membership group authority avoids unnecessary failovers due to the different clients driving different nodes to assume therole of primary replica node, according to various embodiments.

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating interactions between nodes thatimplement a logical volume, a node that implements a membership groupauthority, and multiple clients attached to the logical volume, whereina node storing a secondary replica fails and a replacement secondaryreplica node is enabled for the logical volume, according to someembodiments.

FIG. 8A is a flow diagram illustrating the authorization of sequencenumbers for computing devices hosting replicas of a logical volume,according to some embodiments.

FIG. 8B is a flow diagram illustrating the use of sequence numbers bycomputing devices hosting replicas of a logical volume when respondingto a read request, according to some embodiments.

FIG. 8C is a flow diagram illustrating the use of sequence numbers bycomputing devices hosting replicas of a logical volume when respondingto a write request, according to some embodiments.

FIG. 9 is a flow diagram illustrating a computing device storing asecondary replica requesting a health check of a primary replica beforeinitiating a transition, according to some embodiments.

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram illustrating a transition/failover process,according to some embodiments.

FIG. 11 is a flow diagram illustrating a process followed by amembership group authority, according to some embodiments.

FIG. 12 is a flow diagram illustrating a connection request flowfollowed by a client computing device, according to some embodiments.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram illustrating an example computer system,according to various embodiments.

While embodiments are described herein by way of example for severalembodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art willrecognize that the embodiments are not limited to the embodiments ordrawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings anddetailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments tothe particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is tocover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within thespirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings usedherein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be usedto limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughoutthis application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e.,meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e.,meaning must). Similarly, the words “include”, “including”, and“includes” mean including, but not limited to.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present disclosure generally relates to allowing multiple clients(e.g. computing systems that can perform reads and writes of data) toattach to a logical volume stored in a distributed computing environmentwhile still guaranteeing linearizability, meaning that any response to aread request received after a write request has been committed willinclude any changes affected by the write request. In general, a volumecan correspond to a logical collection of data, such as a set of datamaintained on behalf of a user. The data of the volume may be replicatedbetween multiple devices within a distributed computing system, in orderto provide multiple replicas of the volume (where such replicas maycollectively represent the volume on the computing system). Replicas ofa volume in a distributed computing system can beneficially provide forautomatic failover and recovery, for example by allowing the user toaccess either a primary replica of a volume or a secondary replica ofthe volume that is synchronized to the primary replica at a block level,such that a failure of either the primary or secondary replica does notinhibit access to the information of the volume. The role of the primaryvolume can be to facilitate reads and writes (sometimes referred to as“input output operations,” or simply “I/O operations”) at the volume forattached clients, and to propagate any writes to the secondary(preferably synchronously in the I/O path, although asynchronousreplication can also be used). The secondary replica can be updatedsynchronously with the primary replica and provide for seamlesstransition during failover operations, whereby the secondary replicaassumes the role of the primary replica, and either the former primaryis designated as the secondary or a new replacement secondary replica isprovisioned. Although many examples herein discuss a primary replica anda secondary replica, it will be appreciated that a logical volume caninclude multiple secondary replicas.

Allowing multiple clients to simultaneously connect to the same volumecan present challenges with respect to data linearizability and systemefficiency. For example, if there is inconsistency amongst the clientsregarding which replica is the primary replica of the volume, then dataread from one replica may not reflect writes made to the other replica.As another example, if network conditions or errors at a particularclient prevent connection of the particular client to the primaryreplica, even though the primary replica is still healthy (e.g., able toserve I/O), the particular client may initiate a failover to thesecondary replica, which would assume the role of the primary replica.Existing connections between the original primary replica and otherclients may trigger failover back to the original primary. This “flipflop” of which replica assumes the role of primary can cause systeminefficiencies such as latency in serving I/O and unnecessary usage ofnetwork connections between distributed computing devices including theclients, the replicas, and any control plane components involved infailover.

The above described problems are addressed in some embodiments by thedisclosed techniques for managing multiple client connections to adistributed, replicated data volume (referred to herein as multi-attachtechniques). Aspects of the disclosed multi-attach techniques canimplement a health check mechanism, wherein a secondary replica thatreceives a failover request (e.g., a connection request from a clientthat cannot reach the primary replica) asks for a health checkinformation from the current primary replica prior to initiatingfailover. This can beneficially prevent one client from initiating afailover while other clients remain connected to the primary replica. Insome embodiments, various health criteria of the primary replica (and/orthe computing device or node storing the primary replica) may be used todetermine whether or not to proceed with initiating a failover, forexample whether any clients are still connected to the primary replica,whether such clients have been performing a greater amount of I/O thanthe client requesting the failover, and how much of the node's networkbandwidth is being consumed by other volumes stored on the node. Aspectsof the disclosed multi-attach techniques can implement a peerconfirmation mechanism, wherein each member of a current membershipgroup for a logical volume (e.g. a primary node and one or moresecondary nodes) locally stores a sequence number and a primary nodeverifies that all members are on the current sequence number beforeresponding to an IO request. This can beneficially prevent performingI/O at a superseded primary replica (e.g., a replica that is no longerthe primary replica, despite having a connection to one of the clientsthat was established prior to failover).

In some embodiments, a system includes a plurality of computing devicesconfigured to implement a block-based storage system, wherein at leastone of the computing devices is configured to implement a membershipgroup authority for the block-based storage system. The computingdevices of the block-based storage system store primary and secondaryreplicas of logical volumes or partitions of logical volumes hosted bythe block-based storage system. In some embodiments, the block-basedstorage system may support two-way replication wherein data for alogical volume or logical volume partition is stored on two separatenodes, wherein one node stores a primary replica and another node storesa secondary replica. In some embodiments, a block-based storage systemmay support N-way replication, wherein one node stores a primary replicaof data for a logical volume or logical volume partition and “N”additional nodes store “N” replicas of the data for the logical volumeor the logical volume partition, wherein “N” is a number equal to orgreater than two. In some embodiments, client computing devices, such ascomputing instances of a virtualized computing service, attach orconnect to a virtual volume hosted by the block-based storage systemsuch that the virtual volume that is implemented across multipleseparate computing devices (e.g. storage hosts or nodes) of theblock-based storage system appears to the client computing device as alocally attached storage device. For example, a logical volume mayappear to a client computing device as being connected to the clientcomputing device via an internet small computer system interface(iSCSI), in some embodiments.

In some embodiments, client computing devices may connect or attach to alogical volume via a first computing device (e.g. storage host or node)storing a primary replica of the logical volume or partition of thelogical volume. In some embodiments, read requests and write requestsmay be serviced only by a computing device of the block-based storagesystem storing a primary replica and requests directed to a computingdevice storing a secondary replica may trigger a transition operation tobe performed such that the computing device storing the secondaryreplica is converted into storing a primary replica. In someembodiments, the transition operation may comprise the computing devicestoring the secondary replica assuming a role of storing the primaryreplica and the computing device previously storing the primary replicaassuming a role of storing the secondary replica. For example, theprimary and secondary replicas may be “flipped.” This may have theadvantage of reducing or eliminating a need to re-mirror data to a newsecondary replica as the previous primary replica will already have thedata necessary to function as a secondary replica. In some embodiments,the transition operation may comprise promoting the secondary replica toprimary replica, designating an additional node to store a replacementsecondary replica, and re-mirroring volume data from the new primaryreplica to the replacement secondary replica.

Also, in some embodiments a block-based storage system may be configuredto connect multiple client computing devices to a same logical volume atthe same time. For example, the block-based storage system may beconfigured to connect a first client computing device to a logicalvolume of a plurality of logical volumes hosted by the block-basedstorage system, wherein the first client computing device connects tothe logical volume via a first computing device of the block-basedstorage system storing a primary replica of the logical volume. Theblock-based storage system may also be configured to connect a secondclient computing device to the logical volume via the first computingdevice storing the primary replica of the logical volume, such that boththe first client computing device and the second client computing deviceare connected to the logical volume at the same time via the firstcomputing device storing the primary replica. Both the client computingdevices concurrently connected to the logical volume may send writerequests and read requests to write data to the logical volume or readdata from the logical volume. The block-based storage system mayguarantee linearizability, meaning that any response to a read requestreceived after a write request has been committed will include anychanges affected by the write request. Also any read response to a readrequest received prior to a write being committed will not includechanges affected by the yet-to-be committed write.

Because multiple client computing devices may be connected or attachedto a same logical volume implemented across multiple computing devices(e.g. nodes) of a block-based storage system at the same time, it may benecessary to ensure that both the client computing devices and computingdevices of the block-based storage system hosting a replica (primary orsecondary) of the logical volume are communicating with an up-to-datemembership of a membership group of computing devices that are currentlystoring replicas (primary or secondary) for the logical volume. Forexample, when a secondary node (e.g. computing device storing asecondary replica) is promoted to be a primary node (e.g. computingdevice storing a primary replica), client computing devices need todirect reads and writes to the promoted primary node (previous secondarynode) and a previous primary node that has been superseded needs tocease to accept write requests or author reads in order to avoidsupplying stale read data or committing writes at a stale node. Also,replication in response to writes needs to be performed by an up-to-datemembership of a membership group of computing devices that are currentlystoring replicas (primary or secondary) for the logical volume.

In some embodiments, in order to ensure up-to date membership isenforced a sequence number may be associated with each membership groupand any changes in the membership of the membership group may cause anew updated sequence number to be authorized. For example, the loss of aprimary node from a membership group, the promotion of a secondary nodeto a primary node, the addition of a secondary node, the loss of asecondary node, etc. may cause a new updated sequence number to beauthorized.

In some embodiments, a membership group authority of a block-basedstorage service may maintain a store storing a latest authorizedsequence number for a given logical volume or logical volume partitionalong with membership information for a membership group associated withthe latest authorized sequence number. Each member of the membershipgroup may be provided the latest authorized sequence number and maylocally store the latest authorized sequence number provided to therespective member of the membership group (e.g. computing device or nodestoring a primary or secondary replica). Also, communications betweenthe members of the membership group may include a latest authorizedsequence number known by the member authoring the communication. Membersof the membership group may compare a sequence number included in acommunication to a locally stored latest authorized sequence number toensure the sender and receiver of the communication are on the samesequence number (e.g. neither node has become stale). Also, a primarynode may seek verification from secondary nodes of a membership groupthat the secondary nodes are on the same sequence number as the primarynode when responding to a communication.

In some embodiments, a first client computing device may be unable toconnect to a given computing device of a block-based storage system,such as a node storing a primary replica of a logical volume to whichthe client computing device is attempting to connect. This can cause thefirst client computing device to initiate a transition/failover request,whereby the first client computing device identifies the server storingthe secondary replica of the logical volume and attempts to establish aconnection with this other server. However, a second client computingdevice may still be able to connect to the given computing device of theblock-based storage system. Also, the second client computing device maybe unable to connect to the other server of the block-based storagesystem.

For example, a network partition may divide a network such that a firstclient computing device and a first node storing a primary replica areon one side of the network partition and a second client computingdevice and a second node storing a secondary replica are on another sideof the network partition. If the second client computing devicesuccessfully causes the second node currently storing the secondaryreplica to be promoted to primary replica, the first client computingdevice will be cut off from the newly promoted primary replica node.This may in turn cause the first client computing device to causeanother node on the same side of the network partition storing asecondary replica to be promoted to a primary replica node, thus cuttingof the second client computing device on the other side of the networkpartition. However, in some embodiments, in order to avoid suchunnecessary flip flops between primary and secondary nodes or asituation of continuous flipping between primary and secondary nodes, ahealth check application programmatic interface (API) may be implementedon nodes of a block-based storage system.

For example, in some embodiments, a computing device of a block-basedstorage system storing a secondary replica (e.g. secondary replica node)of a logical volume, prior to initiating a transition in response to aconnect request from a client computing device, may send a request to ahealth check API of a computing device of the block-based storageservice storing a primary replica of the logical volume (e.g. primaryreplica node). If the primary replica node replies with healthinformation indicating that the primary replica node is healthy, thenode storing the secondary replica may refrain from initiating atransition/failover. However, if the primary replica node fails toresponse in a threshold amount of time or responds with healthinformation indicating that the primary replica node is unhealthy, thesecondary replica node may proceed with initiating a transition/failoverto assume the role of primary replica node for the logical volumepartition.

In some embodiments, a primary replica node may be considered healthy inregards to determining whether or not to initiate a transition/failoverbased on whether or not the node storing the primary replica remainsattached to at least one client computing device. In other embodiments,a node storing a primary replica may be considered healthy in regards todetermining whether or not to initiate a transition/failover based onwhether the node storing the primary replica remains connected to amajority of client computing devices associated with the logical volume.In some embodiments, a node storing a primary replica may be consideredhealthy in regards to determining whether or not to initiate atransition/failover based on whether the node storing the primaryreplica remains connected to a client computing device generating agreatest volume of IO traffic (e.g. read requests and write requests)directed to the logical volume of a group of client computing devicesassociated with the logical volume. In some embodiments, otherconsiderations may be used to determine whether a node storing a primaryreplica is healthy in regards to determining whether or not to initiatea transition/failover.

In some embodiments, a transition/failover may comprise a “flip”transition (e.g. primary and secondary replicas change roles) or afailover transition (e.g. promotion of a secondary replica to a role ofprimary and appointment of a replacement secondary replica). In someembodiments, whether a “flip” transition or failover is to be performedmay be selected based on a health of a current primary node determinedbased on health check information received from a health check API ofthe current primary node.

According to some embodiments, a system includes a plurality ofcomputing devices configured to implement a block storage system. Theblock storage system is configured to connect a first client computingdevice to a logical volume of a plurality of logical volumes of theblock storage system, wherein the first client computing device connectsto the logical volume via a first computing device of the block storagesystem storing a primary replica of the logical volume. The blockstorage service is also configured to connect a second client computingdevice to the logical volume via the first computing device storing theprimary replica of the logical volume. At least one of the plurality ofcomputing devices of the block storage system is configured to implementa membership group authority for the block storage system. Themembership group authority is configured to store a current sequencenumber for a membership group for the logical volume, wherein themembership group defines which of the plurality of computing devices ofthe block storage system store the primary replica of the logical volumeand which of the plurality of computing devices of the block storagesystem store one or more secondary replicas of the logical volume. Themembership group authority is also configured to authorize a newsequence number for an updated version of the membership group due to achange in membership of the computing devices of the block storagesystem included in the membership group for the logical volume.Additionally, the membership group authority is configured to decline toauthorize a new sequence number if a sequence number submitted with arequest for the new sequence number is less than or equal to a greatestauthorized sequence number previously authorized for the logical volume.Moreover, respective computing devices of the membership group for thelogical volume are configured to locally store a latest sequence numberfor the membership group authorized by the membership group authoritythat has been presented to the respective computing device and verifythat a sequence number included in a communication directed to therespective computing device from one or more other computing devices ofthe membership group includes the latest sequence number for the logicalvolume locally stored by the respective computing device.

According to some embodiments, a method includes receiving a readrequest at a first computing device storing a primary replica for alogical volume. The method also includes sending a verification requestto a second computing device storing a secondary replica for the logicalvolume, wherein the request causes the first computing device or thesecond computing device to verify that a sequence number locally storedat the first computing device for the logical volume corresponds with asequence number locally stored at the second computing device for thelogical volume. The method also includes refraining from sendingrequested read data in response to the read request until the first orsecond computing device verifies that the sequence number for thelogical volume locally stored at the first computing device storing theprimary replica corresponds with the sequence number for the logicalvolume stored locally on the second computing device storing thesecondary replica.

According to some embodiments, non-transitory, computer-readable storagemedia store program instructions that, when executed on or across one ormore processors, cause the one or more processors to propose a sequencenumber for a membership group for a logical volume to a membership groupauthority, wherein the proposed sequence number is greater than agreatest sequence locally stored for the logical volume. The programinstructions also cause the one or more processors to receive anindication from the membership group authority that the proposedsequence number has been authorized for the logical volume as a newsequence number, wherein the new sequence number is associated with amembership group for the logical volume. Additionally, the programinstructions cause the one or more processors to provide the sequencenumber and information about the associated membership group to themembers of the membership group for the logical volume, wherein themembers of the membership group store replicas of the logical volume.

According to some embodiments, a system includes a plurality ofcomputing devices configured to implement a block storage system. Theblock storage system is configured to connect a first client computingdevice to a logical volume of a plurality of logical volumes hosted bythe block storage system, wherein the first client computing deviceconnects to the logical volume via a first computing device of the blockstorage system storing a primary replica of the logical volume. Also,the block storage system is configured to connect one or more additionalclient computing devices to the logical volume via the first computingdevice storing the primary replica of the logical volume. Additionally,a computing device of the block storage system storing a secondaryreplica of the logical volume is configured to receive a request, fromthe first client computing device or one of the one or more additionalclient computing devices, requesting to connect to the computing devicestoring the secondary replica such that the computing device storing thesecondary replica assumes a role of primary replica for the logicalvolume. In response to receive the request, the computing device storingthe secondary replica of the logical volume is configured to send arequest to a health check application programmatic interface (API) ofthe first computing device storing the primary replica, wherein thehealth check API is configured to return health information for thefirst computing device. Also, the computing device storing the secondaryreplica of the logical volume is configured to, in response to receivinghealth information indicating that the first computing device remainsattached to the first client computing device or at least one of the oneor more additional client computing devices, refrain from initiating atransition to assume the role of primary replica for the logical volume.

According to some embodiments, a method includes receiving a requestfrom a first client computing device or one of one or more additionalclient computing devices requesting to connect to a computing devicestoring a secondary replica of a logical volume such that the computingdevice storing the secondary replica assumes a role of primary replicafor the logical volume, wherein multiple client computing devices areconnected to the logical volume. The method further includes sending arequest to a health check application programmatic interface (API) of afirst computing device storing a primary replica of the logical volume,wherein the health check API is configured to return health informationfor the first computing device. Additionally, the method includesdetermining, by the computing devices storing the secondary replica, toinitiate a transition to assume the role of primary replica for thelogical volume based on health information for the first computingdevice storing the primary replica.

According to some embodiments, one or more non-transitory,computer-readable storage media store instructions that when executed onor across one or more processors cause the one or more processors toreceive a request from a first client computing device or one of one ormore additional client computing devices requesting a computing devicehosting a secondary replica of a logical volume assume a role of primaryreplica for the logical volume, wherein multiple client computingdevices are attached to the logical volume. The program instructionsfurther cause the one or more processors to send a request to a healthcheck application programmatic interface (API) of a first computingdevice hosting or previously hosting a primary replica for the logicalvolume, wherein the health check API is configured to return healthinformation for the first computing device. Additionally, the programinstructions cause the one or more processors to determine to initiate atransition based on a health of the first computing device hosting orpreviously hosting the primary replica.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a provider network 102 thatincludes a block-based storage service that supports multi-attachvolumes, according to some embodiments. The provider network 102 can bea cloud provider network, or “cloud,” which refers to a large pool ofnetwork-accessible computing resources (such as compute, storage, andnetworking resources, applications, and services), which may bevirtualized or bare-metal. The cloud can provide convenient, on-demandnetwork access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources thatcan be programmatically provisioned and released in response to customercommands. These resources can be dynamically provisioned andreconfigured to adjust to variable load. Cloud computing can thus beconsidered as both the applications delivered as services over apublicly accessible network (e.g., the Internet, a cellularcommunication network) and the hardware and software in cloud providerdata centers that provide those services.

The cloud provider network can provide on-demand, scalable computingplatforms to users through a network, for example allowing users to haveat their disposal scalable “virtual computing devices” via their use ofthe compute servers and block store servers. These virtual computingdevices have attributes of a personal computing device includinghardware (various types of processors, local memory, random accessmemory (“RAM”), hard-disk and/or solid state drive (“SSD”) storage), achoice of operating systems, networking capabilities, and pre-loadedapplication software. Each virtual computing device may also virtualizeits console input and output (“I/O”) (e.g., keyboard, display, andmouse). This virtualization allows users to connect to their virtualcomputing device using a computer application such as a browser,application programming interface, software development kit, or thelike, in order to configure and use their virtual computing device justas they would a personal computing device. Unlike personal computingdevices, which possess a fixed quantity of hardware resources availableto the user, the hardware associated with the virtual computing devicescan be scaled up or down depending upon the resources the user requires.Users can choose to deploy their virtual computing systems to providenetwork-based services for their own use and/or for use by theircustomers or clients.

In some embodiments, provider network 102 includes block-based storageservice 104, and a plurality of client computing devices, such ascompute instances 136, 138, and 140, that are attached to one or morelogical volumes implemented by the block-based storage service, such aslogical volume 1 (124), logical volume 2 (126), and logical volume N(128). The compute instances 136, 138, and 140, can perform I/Ooperations at the primary replica of logical volume 1 (124) via theirrespective clients 162, 164, and 166. The clients 162, 164, and 166represent instructions for the compute instances 136, 138, and 140 toestablish connections with, and handle I/O to, remote volumes (e.g.,volumes accessed over a network). A client may be implemented on anoffload card of a server that includes the processing units (e.g., CPUsor GPUs) of a compute instance. In some embodiments, a block-basedstorage service may include any number of computing devices, such ascomputing devices 106 and 108 through 110 that include physical storagedevices used to store replicas for any number of logical volumes, orpartitions, thereof, hosted by the block-based storage service.

In some embodiments, a provider network may perform compute services,storage services, networking services, and/or other services for usersof the provider network. For example, user computing devices 160 areconnected to provider network 102 via network 150 and may be users orclients of the provider network that includes the block-based storageservice 104. In some embodiments, users may be provisioned clientcomputing devices of a provider network, such as portions of computingdevices that implement computing instances 136, 138, and 140.Furthermore, a logical volume may be provisioned to for use by a userand attached to the user's computing instance. For example, clientapplications 162, 164, and 166 running on compute instances 136, 138,and 140 are connected via connections 142 to logical volume 1 (124) viacomputing device 106 hosting primary replica 112 of logical volume 1(124).

In some embodiments, each logical volume may be implemented via multiplereplicas stored on multiple separate computing devices. In someembodiments, different replicas of a logical volume may be stored bycomputing devices in different data centers, different availabilityzones, etc. For example, these different storage locations may reducethe likelihood of correlated failures of replicas for a logical volumesuch as due to a power failure, a network failure, etc. In someembodiments, a primary and a secondary replica may be stored for eachlogical volume, or partition thereof, by a different computing device ina different data center, availability zone, etc. Also, in someembodiments, “N” replicas may be stored for each logical volume, orpartition thereof, by three or more different computing devices in threeor more different data centers, availability zones, etc. of a providernetwork, such as provider network 102.

For example, logical volume 1 (124) is implemented via computing device106 storing primary replica 112 and computing device 108 storingsecondary replica 118. Also, logical volume 2 (126) is implemented viacomputing device 110 storing primary replica 120 and computing device106 storing secondary replica 114. Additionally, a block-based storageservice, such as block-based storage service 104, may support any numberof additional logical volumes “N.” As another example, logical volume“N” (128) is implemented via computing device 108 storing primaryreplica 116 and computing device 110 storing secondary replica 122. Insome embodiments, computing devices 106, 108, and 110 may be located indifferent failure impact zones, such as different racks within acomputing room, different computing rooms within a data center,different data centers within an availability zone, or in differentavailability zones of a provider network, as a few examples.

In addition, block-based storage service 104 may include a block-basedstorage service control plane, such as block-based storage servicecontrol plane 130. The traffic and operations of the cloud providernetwork may broadly be subdivided into two categories in variousembodiments: control plane operations carried over a logical controlplane and data plane operations carried over a logical data plane. Whilethe data plane represents the movement of user data through thedistributed computing system, the control plane represents the movementof control signals through the distributed computing system. The controlplane generally includes one or more control plane componentsdistributed across and implemented by one or more control servers.Control plane traffic generally includes administrative operations, suchas system configuration and management (e.g., resource placement,hardware capacity management, diagnostic monitoring, system stateinformation). The data plane includes customer resources that areimplemented on the cloud provider network (e.g., computing instances,containers, block storage volumes, databases, file storage). Data planetraffic generally includes non-administrative operations such astransferring customer data to and from the customer resources. Thecontrol plane components are typically implemented on a separate set ofservers from the data plane servers, and control plane traffic and dataplane traffic may be sent over separate/distinct networks.

The block-based storage service control plane may determine placement ofa logical volume on a given set of computing devices or may work with acomputing device during a failover to identify a computing device tohost a replacement replica. In some embodiments, a block-based storageservice control plane, such as block-based storage service control plane130, may balance IO load, data storage requirements, etc. when selectingcomputing devices to host a primary or a secondary replica of a logicalvolume. In some embodiments, a block-based storage service controlplane, such as block-based storage control plane 130, may perform othermanagement tasks for managing the block-based storage service such asthose further described herein.

In some embodiments, a block-based storage service, such as block-basedstorage service 104, may further include a membership group authority,such as membership group authority 132. In some embodiments, themembership group authority may authorize, or decline to authorize,proposed new sequence numbers for an associated membership group basedon whether or not the proposed sequence number is a next sequence numberin a sequence that has not yet been authorized for a logical volume, orpartition thereof. In some embodiments, a sequence number may berepresented by a 64-bit number. In some embodiments, a sequence numbermay be a monotonically increasing integer, wherein each successivesequence number is greater than a previous sequence number by “1.” Insome embodiments, a membership group authority, such as membership groupauthority 132, includes a membership group and sequence number store,such as membership group and sequence number store 134. In someembodiments, a membership group and sequence number store stores agreatest sequence number and associated membership group information foreach logical volume, or partition thereof, hosted by a block-basedstorage service, such as block-based storage service 104.

For example, membership group and sequence number store 134 stores asequence number of “4” for logical volume 1 along with associatedmembership group information indicating that for sequence number “4”computing device 106 is the primary node storing primary replica 112 andcomputing device 108 is the secondary node storing secondary replica118. Additionally, membership group and sequence number store 134 storesa sequence number of “1” for logical volume 2 along with associatedmembership group information indicating that for sequence number “1”computing device 110 is the primary node storing primary replica 120 oflogical volume 2 and computing device 106 is the secondary node storingsecondary replica 114 of logical volume 2. Also, membership group andsequence number store 134 stores a sequence number of “2” for logicalvolume N along with associated membership group information indicatingthat for sequence number “2” computing device 108 is the primary nodestoring primary replica 116 of logical volume N and computing device 110is the secondary node storing secondary replica 122 of logical volume N.

In some embodiments, all members of a membership group for a logicalvolume, or partition thereof, locally store a latest sequence number andassociated membership group information for a logical volume for areplica stored on the respective computing device of the block-basedstorage service. For example, computing device 106 of block-basedstorage service 104 locally stores a latest sequence number andmembership group information for logical volumes 1 and 2. Also,computing device 108 locally stores a latest sequence number andmembership group information associated with the latest sequence numberfor logical volumes 1 and N. Additionally, computing device 110 locallystores a latest sequence number and membership group informationassociated with the latest sequence number for logical volumes 2 and N.The locally stored latest authorized sequence numbers are the latestsequence numbers for the given logical volume that have been seen by therespective computing device locally storing the respective sequencenumber. However, as discussed in more detail below, a situation mayarise wherein a new sequence number that is larger (and later) than alocally stored sequence number has been authorized by a membership groupauthority, such as membership group authority 132, but has not yet beenreceived or seen by a given computing device storing an out-of-datelocally stored sequence number. Additionally, each client computingdevice connected to a given logical volume may locally store a latestsequence number for the logical volume. For example each of clientcomputing devices 136, 138, and 140 locally store sequence number 4 andassociated membership group information for logical volume 1 (124) towhich client computing devices 136, 138, and 140 are connected.

In some embodiments, communications between nodes hosting a givenlogical volume, such as between computing devices 106 and 108 eachhosting a replica of logical volume 1 (124) may include a latestsequence number locally stored by the entity sending the communication.An entity receiving the communication may verify that the sequencenumber included with the communication matches a locally stored sequencenumber and may further seek verification that the sequence numberincluded with the communication matches sequence numbers locally storedby other members of the membership group, such as computing devicesstoring secondary replicas for the same logical volume. In someembodiments, agreement between primary and secondary nodes is aprerequisite for performing TO, such as reads and writes. By enforcingsequence number agreement, writes to a stale primary node or reads froma stale primary node may be avoided.

In some embodiments, a block-based storage service, such as block-basedstorage service 104, may be implemented in an asynchronous networkenvironment, meaning that messages between nodes of the asynchronousnetwork may be delayed or delivered out of order. However, as brieflydiscussed above and discussed in more detail below, enforcement ofsequence number agreement may prevent writes to a stale primary node orreads from a stale primary node is such an asynchronous networkenvironment. In some embodiments, enforcement of sequence numberagreement along with requiring replication verification beforecommitting a write may assure consistency in a distributed storagesystem, such as in block-based storage service 104. In some embodiments,replicated writes may include an ID of a current primary node sendingthe replicated write to a secondary node along with a sequence numberlocally stored by the primary node sending the replicated write. In someembodiments, a write will not be confirmed if a sequence number of asecondary node does not match a sequence number included with areplicated write request. In a similar manner, a primary node may verifythat secondary nodes locally store sequence numbers matching a sequencenumber locally stored by a primary node performing a read. Theseverifications may be satisfied before the primary node sends therequested read data to the client computing device requesting the reador commits write data and sends a write acknowledgement to the clientcomputing device requesting the write.

In some embodiments, a new logical volume may initially be placed on asingle computing device (e.g. node) with a sequence number of zero.Thus, the membership group information for the sequence number “0” wouldbe the ID of the solo primary node. Then, once a secondary replica isimplemented on another computing device (e.g. a secondary node), a newsequence number “1” may be authorized and associated with a membershipgroup comprising the primary node and the secondary node.

In some embodiments, during a transition or failover a new primary nodemay be selected from a set of nodes that were previously secondary nodesfor a logical volume (e.g. computing devices storing secondary replicasfor the logical volume). By requiring at least one node to overlapbetween sequential membership groups, ordered transitions may beachieved. For example, a secondary node will already be storing areplica of the logical volume, or partition thereof, when promoted toprimary node.

This specification continues with a general description of a providernetwork, which may implement multi-attach logical volumes of ablock-based storage service that are accessed by virtual computeinstances offered by a virtual compute service.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a provider network that includesa virtualized computing resource service and a block-based storageservice that supports multi-attach volumes, according to someembodiments.

Provider network 102 may be set up by an entity such as a company or apublic sector organization to provide one or more services (such asvarious types of cloud-based computing or storage) accessible via theInternet and/or other networks to users 210. Provider network 102 mayinclude numerous data centers hosting various resource pools, such ascollections of physical and/or virtualized computer servers, storagedevices, networking equipment and the like (e.g., computing system 1300described below with regard to FIG. 13), needed to implement anddistribute the infrastructure and services offered by the providernetwork 102. In some embodiments, provider network 102 may providecomputing resources, such as virtual compute service 200, storageservices, such as block-based storage service 104, and/or any other typeof network-based services. Users 210 may access these various servicesoffered by provider network 102 via network 270. Likewise network-basedservices may themselves communicate and/or make use of one another toprovide different services. For example, computing resources offered tousers 210 in units called “instances,” such as virtual or physicalcompute instances, may make use of particular logical data volumes, suchas logical volume 1 (124), logical volume 2 (126), logical volume N(128), etc., providing virtual block-based storage for the computeinstances.

As noted above, virtual compute service 240 may offer various computeinstances, such as compute instances 212 a, 212 b, 214 a, and 214 b tousers 210. A virtual compute instance may, for example, comprise one ormore servers with a specified computational capacity (which may bespecified by indicating the type and number of CPUs, the main memorysize, and so on) and a specified software stack (e.g., a particularversion of an operating system, which may in turn run on top of ahypervisor). A number of different types of computing devices may beused singly or in combination to implement the compute instances ofvirtual compute service 200 in different embodiments, including specialpurpose computer servers, storage devices, network devices and the like.In some embodiments instance users 210 or any other user may beconfigured (and/or authorized) to direct network traffic to a computeinstance. In various embodiments, compute instances may mount, connect,attach or map to one or more data volumes, such as logical volume 1(124), logical volume 2 (126), logical volume N (128) provided byblock-based storage service 104 in order to obtain persistentblock-based storage for performing various operations.

Compute instances may operate or implement a variety of differentplatforms, such as application server instances, Java™ virtual machines(JVMs), special-purpose operating systems, platforms that supportvarious interpreted or compiled programming languages such as Ruby,Perl, Python, C, C++ and the like, or high-performance computingplatforms) suitable for performing client applications, without forexample requiring the client 210 to access an instance. In someembodiments, compute instances have different types or configurationsbased on expected uptime ratios. The uptime ratio of a particularcompute instance may be defined as the ratio of the amount of time theinstance is activated, to the total amount of time for which theinstance is reserved. Uptime ratios may also be referred to asutilizations in some implementations. If a client expects to use acompute instance for a relatively small fraction of the time for whichthe instance is reserved (e.g., 30%-35% of a year-long reservation), theclient may decide to reserve the instance as a Low Uptime Ratioinstance, and pay a discounted hourly usage fee in accordance with theassociated pricing policy. If the client expects to have a steady-stateworkload that requires an instance to be up most of the time, the clientmay reserve a High Uptime Ratio instance and potentially pay an evenlower hourly usage fee, although in some embodiments the hourly fee maybe charged for the entire duration of the reservation, regardless of theactual number of hours of use, in accordance with pricing policy. Anoption for Medium Uptime Ratio instances, with a corresponding pricingpolicy, may be supported in some embodiments as well, where the upfrontcosts and the per-hour costs fall between the corresponding High UptimeRatio and Low Uptime Ratio costs.

Compute instance configurations may also include compute instances witha general or specific purpose, such as computational workloads forcompute intensive applications (e.g., high-traffic web applications, adserving, batch processing, video encoding, distributed analytics,high-energy physics, genome analysis, and computational fluid dynamics),graphics intensive workloads (e.g., game streaming, 3D applicationstreaming, server-side graphics workloads, rendering, financialmodeling, and engineering design), memory intensive workloads (e.g.,high performance databases, distributed memory caches, in-memoryanalytics, genome assembly and analysis), and storage optimizedworkloads (e.g., data warehousing and cluster file systems). Size ofcompute instances, such as a particular number of virtual CPU cores,memory, cache, storage, as well as any other performance characteristic.Configurations of compute instances may also include their location, ina particular data center, availability zone, geographic, location, etc.. . . and (in the case of reserved compute instances) reservation termlength.

As illustrated in FIG. 2, a virtualization host, such as virtualizationhosts 202 a and 202 n, may implement and/or manage multiple computeinstances 212 a, 212 b, 214 a, and 214 b respectively, in someembodiments, and may be one or more computing devices, such as computingsystem 1300 described below with regard to FIG. 13. Virtualization hosts202 may also provide multi-tenant hosting of compute instances. Forexample, in some embodiments, one virtualization host may host a computeinstance for one entity (e.g., a particular client or account of virtualcomputing service 210), while another compute instance hosted at thesame virtualization host may be hosted for another entity (e.g., adifferent account). A virtualization host may include a virtualizationmanagement module, such as virtualization management modules 204 a and204 n capable of instantiating and managing a number of differentclient-accessible virtual machines or compute instances. Thevirtualization management module may include, for example, a hypervisorand an administrative instance of an operating system, which may betermed a “domain-zero” or “dom0” operating system in someimplementations. The dom0 operating system may not be accessible byclients on whose behalf the compute instances run, but may instead beresponsible for various administrative or control-plane operations ofthe network provider, including handling the network traffic directed toor from the compute instances.

Virtual computing service 200 may implement control plane 220 to performvarious management operations. For instance, control plane 220 mayimplement resource management to place compute instances, and manage theaccess to, capacity of, mappings to, and other control or direction ofcompute instances offered by provider network. Control plane 220 mayprovide both a direct sell and 3^(rd) party resell market for capacityreservations (e.g., reserved compute instances). For example, controlplane 250 may allow users 210 to learn about, select, purchase accessto, and/or reserve capacity for computing resources, either from aninitial sale marketplace or a resale marketplace, via a web page or viaan API. For example, control plane 220 may provide listings of differentavailable compute instance types, each with a different creditaccumulation rate. Control plane 220 may also offer and/or implement aflexible set of resource reservation, control and access interfaces forusers 210 via an interface (e.g., API). For example, control plane 220may provide credentials or permissions to users 210 such that computeinstance control operations/interactions between clients and in-usecomputing resources may be performed.

In various embodiments, control plane 220 may track the consumption ofvarious computing instances consumed for different virtual computerresources, clients, user accounts, and/or specific instances. In atleast some embodiments, control plane 220 may implement variousadministrative actions to stop, heal, manage, or otherwise respond tovarious different scenarios in the fleet of virtualization hosts 202 andinstances 212, 214. Control plane 220 may also provide access to variousmetric data for client(s) 210 as well as manage client configuredalarms. In various embodiments, control plane 220 may implement billingmanagement. Control plane 220 may be configured to detect billing events(e.g., specific dates, times, usages, requests for bill, or any othercause to generate a bill for a particular user account or paymentaccount linked to user accounts). In response to detecting the billingevent, billing management module may be configured to generate a billfor a user account or payment account linked to user accounts.

In various embodiments, provider network 102 may also implementblock-based storage service 104 for performing storage operations.Block-based storage service 104 illustrated in FIG. 2 may be the same asor similar to block-based storage service 104 illustrated in FIG. 1.Block-based storage service 104 is a storage system, composed of a poolof multiple independent resource hosts, such as computing devices 106through 110 (e.g., server block data storage systems), which provideblock level storage for storing one or more sets of data volumes, suchas logical data volume(s) 1 (124) through “N” (128). Data volumes may beattached, mounted, mapped, or otherwise connected to particular clientcomputing devices (e.g., a virtual compute instance of virtual computeservice 200), providing virtual block-based storage (e.g., hard diskstorage or other persistent storage) as a contiguous set of logicalblocks. In some embodiments, a logical data volume may be divided upinto multiple data chunks or partitions (including one or more datablocks) for performing other block storage operations, such as snapshotoperations or replication operations. A volume snapshot of a data volumemay be a fixed point-in-time representation of the state of the datavolume. In some embodiments, volume snapshots may be stored remotelyfrom a storage host maintaining a data volume, such as in anotherstorage service of a provider network (not shown). Snapshot operationsmay be performed to send, copy, and/or otherwise preserve the snapshotof a given data volume in another storage location, such as a remotesnapshot data.

Block-based storage service 104 may implement block-based storageservice control plane 130 to assist in the operation of block-basedstorage service 104. In various embodiments, block-based storage servicecontrol plane 130 assists in managing the availability of block datastorage to clients, such as programs executing on compute instancesprovided by virtual compute service 200 and/or other network-basedservices located within provider network 102 and/or optionally computingsystems (not shown) located within one or more other data centers, orother computing systems external to provider network 102 available overa network 270. Access to data volumes may be provided over an internalnetwork within provider network 102 or externally via network 270, inresponse to block data transaction instructions.

Block-based storage service control plane 130 may provide a variety ofservices related to providing block level storage functionality,including the management of user accounts (e.g., creation, deletion,billing, collection of payment, etc.). Control plane 130 may implementcapacity management, which may generate and manage a capacity model forblock-based storage service 104, and may direct the performance ofresponsive actions based on the capacity of block-based storage service104. Block-based storage service control plane 130 may further provideservices related to the creation, usage and deletion of data volumes inresponse to configuration requests. Block-based storage service controlplane 130 may also provide services related to the creation, usage anddeletion of volume snapshots on other storage services. Block-basedstorage service control plane 130 may also provide services related tothe collection and processing of performance and auditing data relatedto the use of data volumes and snapshots of those volumes.

Users 210 may encompass any type of client configurable to submitrequests to provider network 102. For example, a given client 210 mayinclude a suitable version of a web browser, or may include a plug-inmodule or other type of code module configured to execute as anextension to or within an execution environment provided by a webbrowser. Alternatively, a client 210 may encompass an application suchas a database application (or user interface thereof), a mediaapplication, an office application or any other application that maymake use of compute instances, a logical data volume, or othernetwork-based service in provider network 102 to perform variousoperations. In some embodiments, such an application may includesufficient protocol support (e.g., for a suitable version of HypertextTransfer Protocol (HTTP)) for generating and processing network-basedservices requests without necessarily implementing full browser supportfor all types of network-based data. In some embodiments, users 210 maybe configured to generate network-based services requests according to aRepresentational State Transfer (REST)-style network-based servicesarchitecture, a document- or message-based network-based servicesarchitecture, or another suitable network-based services architecture.In some embodiments, a client 210 (e.g., a computational client) may beconfigured to provide access to a compute instance or a logical datavolume in a manner that is transparent to applications implement on theclient 210 utilizing computational resources provided by the computeinstance or block storage provided by the logical data volume.

Users 210 may convey network-based service requests to provider network102 via external network 270. In various embodiments, external network270 may encompass any suitable combination of networking hardware andprotocols necessary to establish network-based communications betweenusers 210 and provider network 200. For example, a network 270 maygenerally encompass the various telecommunications networks and serviceproviders that collectively implement the Internet. A network 270 mayalso include private networks such as local area networks (LANs) or widearea networks (WANs) as well as public or private wireless networks. Forexample, both a given client 210 and provider network 102 may berespectively provisioned within enterprises having their own internalnetworks. In such an embodiment, a network 270 may include the hardware(e.g., modems, routers, switches, load balancers, proxy servers, etc.)and software (e.g., protocol stacks, accounting software,firewall/security software, etc.) necessary to establish a networkinglink between given client 210 and the Internet as well as between theInternet and provider network 102. It is noted that in some embodiments,users 210 may communicate with provider network 102 using a privatenetwork rather than the public Internet.

In some embodiments, multiple resource hosts, such as computing devices1-6, 108, and 110, may be implemented in order to provide block-basedstorage services. A resource host may be one or more computing systemsor devices, such as a storage server or other computing system (e.g.,computing system 1300 described below with regard to FIG. 13). Eachresource host may maintain respective replicas of logical volumes, orpartitions thereof. Some logical volumes may differ in size from otherlogical volumes, in some embodiments. Resource hosts may also providemulti-tenant storage. For example, in some embodiments, one resourcehost may maintain a replica of a logical volume for one account ofblock-based storage service 104, while another logical volume replica ismaintained at the same resource host, which may be maintained for adifferent account. Resource hosts, such as computing devices 106, 108,and 110, may persist their respective logical volume replicas in one ormore block-based storage devices (e.g., hard disk drives, solid statedrives, etc.) that may be directly attached to a computing system ordevice implementing the respective resource host. Resource hosts mayimplement different persistent storage devices. For example, someresource hosts may implement solid state drives (SSDs) for persistentblock storage, while other resource hosts may implement hard disk drives(HDDs) or other magnetic-based persistent storage devices. In this waydifferent volume types, specifications, and other performancecharacteristics may be provided according to the persistent storagedevices implemented at the resource host.

Block-based storage service 104 may manage and maintain logical volumereplicas in a variety of different ways. Different durability schemesmay be implemented for some logical volumes among two or more resourcehosts as a distributed resource maintaining a same replica of a logicalvolume at different partitions of the logical volume. For example,different types of mirroring and/or replication techniques may beimplemented (e.g., RAID 1) to increase the durability of logical volume,such as by eliminating a single point of failure for a logical volume.In order to provide access to a logical volume, resource hosts may thencoordinate I/O requests (e.g. input/output requests), such as writerequests, among the two or more resource hosts maintaining a replica ofa data volume. For example, for a given data volume, one resource hostmay serve as a primary resource host (e.g. primary node). A primaryresource host may, in various embodiments, receive and process requests(e.g., I/O requests) from clients of the logical volume. Thus, theprimary resource host may then coordinate replication of I/O requests,such as write requests, or any other changes or modifications to thelogical volume to one or more other resource hosts serving as secondaryresource hosts (e.g. secondary nodes). Thus, when a write request isreceived for the logical volume at a primary resource host, the primaryresource host may forward the write request to the secondary resourcehost(s) and wait until the secondary resource host(s) acknowledges thewrite request as complete before completing the write request at theprimary resource host.

Please note, that in some embodiments, the role of primary and secondaryresource hosts may be assigned per logical volume. For example, for alogical volume maintained at one resource host, the resource host mayserve as a primary resource host. While for another logical volumemaintained at the same resource host, the resource host may serve as asecondary resource host. Resource hosts may implement respective I/Omanagers. The I/O managers may handle I/O requests directed towardlogical volumes maintained at a particular resource host. Thus, I/Omanagers may process and handle a write request to a logical volumereplica at a resource host, for example. I/O managers may be configuredto process I/O requests according to a block-based storage serviceapplication programming interface (API) and/or other communicationprotocols, such as such as internet small computer system interface(iSCSI). Primary resource hosts may direct other operations for logicalvolumes, like snapshot operations or other I/O operations (e.g., servinga read request). In some embodiments, I/O managers of resource host(s)may allocate processing capacity to provide access to data volumesstored at resource host(s), such as by allocating IOPS, throughput, orother resources, to provide specified performance for data volumes.

Resource hosts may be located within different infrastructurelocalities. Infrastructure localities may be defined by devices, such asserver racks, networking switches, routers, or other components, powersources (or other resource host suppliers), or physical or geographicallocations (e.g., locations in a particular row, room, building, datacenter, fault tolerant zone, etc.). Infrastructure localities may varyin scope such that a resource host (and replicas of data volumesimplemented on the resource host) may be within multiple different typesof infrastructure localities, such as a particular network router orbrick, a particular room location, a particular site, etc.

In at least some embodiments, control plane 130 may implement host datacollection to collect information, metrics, metadata, or any otherinformation for performing volume creating or managing logical volumes.Host data collection may periodically sweep resource host(s) (e.g.computing devices 106 through 110) with a query for information,metrics, or metadata. For example, resource hosts may provide currentutilization metrics, ongoing tasks or operations (e.g., such asmigration or remirror tasks), and any other state information for theresource host, including volume specific information for volume replicasresiding at the resource hosts. In some embodiments, host datacollection may aggregate the data according to infrastructurelocalities, partitions, resource hosts, or other granularities forblock-based storage service 104. Host data collection may store the dataat volume state store, which may persistently maintain the collecteddata. In some embodiments, a volume state store may be implemented as adatabase or otherwise searchable/query-able storage system to provideaccess to other components of control plane 130.

Control plane 130 may implement connection management to direct theestablishment of a connection between logical volumes and other clientresources, such as an instance or client computing device. For example,a connection request may be received for a virtual compute instance.Connection management may notify a creation engine to create a logicalvolume to be connected to the virtual compute instance. Connectionmanagement may generate the necessary credentials (e.g., tokens, leaseidentifiers, or keys) to provide to the virtual compute instance, aswell as notify the resource host(s) that will host a primary replica ofthe created logical volume of the virtual compute instances accessrights. In at least some embodiments, resource host(s) may restrictaccess to a created data volume to those client resources that areidentified according to the provided credentials.

In some embodiments, the client computing devices as illustrated in FIG.1, such as client computing devices 136, 138, and 140, may be computinginstances of a virtual compute service, wherein the different clientcomputing devices are implemented on different virtualization hosts ofthe virtual compute service that have different network connections to agiven computing device of a block-based storage service hosting aprimary replica.

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating interactions regarding a read requestand a write request between nodes that implement a logical volume andmultiple clients attached to the logical volume, according to someembodiments.

FIG. 3 illustrates a logical volume 1 (302) implemented via node 1(304), node 2 (306) and node “N” (308) of a block-based storage service.For example, in some embodiments, nodes 1, 2, and “N” may be computingdevices of a block-based storage service, such as computing devices 106,108, and 110 of block-based storage service 104 illustrated in FIGS. 1and 2. FIG. 3 also illustrates client computing devices attached tological volume 1 (302). The client computing devices include client 1(310), client 2 (312) and client “N” (314). In some embodiments anynumber of client computing devices may be attached to a logical volume.In some embodiments, clients 1-N may be client computing devices such asclient computing devices 136, 138, and 140 as illustrated in FIG. 1 ormay be compute instances of a virtual computing service, such asillustrated in FIG. 2.

Under normal conditions, (e.g. no failure or transition/failover inprogress) each node implementing a logical volume may locally store alatest sequence number and membership group information for the logicalvolume, wherein the nodes store the same sequence number and membershipgroup information for the logical volume. For example, node 1 (304),node 2 (306) and node “N” (308) all locally store sequence number “1” asa latest authorized sequence number for logical volume 1 (302). Also,node 1 (304), node 2 (306) and node “N” (308) all locally storemembership group information indicating that nodes 1, 2, and N areincluded in a membership group associated with sequence number “1” forlogical volume 1 (302). In some embodiments, an order in which membersare listed in membership group information may indicate relativepriorities of the members. For example, the ordering of node 1 beforenodes 2 and “N” may indicate that node 1 is a primary node for thelogical volume and nodes 2 and “N” are secondary nodes for the logicalvolume (e.g. node 1 stores a primary replica and nodes 2 and “N” storesecondary replicas).

In some embodiments, each client computing device connected to a logicalvolume, such as client 1 (310), client 2 (312), and client “N” (314),may locally store a latest sequence number for the logical volume andassociated membership group information. For example nodes 1 (304), 2(306), and 3 (308) each store sequence number “1” for logical volume 1(302) and membership group information indicating that node 1 (304) is aprimary node for the logical volume 1 (302) and nodes 2 (306) and “N”(308) are secondary nodes for the logical volume 1 (302) (e.g. theystore secondary replicas of the logical volume).

At 316, client 1 (310) sends a read request 316 to primary node 1 (304).In response to receiving the read request 316, the primary node 1 (304)is configured to send a sequence number verification request to othermembers of the membership group to verify that another member of themembership group has not moved on to a larger sequence number, thuspotentially leaving primary node 1 as a stale primary node that has beensuperseded.

For example, primary node 1 (304) sends sequence number verificationrequests 318 and 320 to node 2 (306) and node “N” (308), respectively.In response, nodes 2 (306) and “N” (308) send messages 322 and 324 thatcan be used to verify up-to-date sequence numbers between the nodes. Insome embodiments, the secondary nodes, such as node 2 (306) and node “N”(308) may perform a verification of matching sequence numbers and send aconfirmation or declination message. In other embodiments, the secondarynodes, such as node 2 (306) and node “N” (308) may send a messagecomprising their respective locally stored sequence numbers and aprimary node, such as primary node 1 (304) may perform a verification ofmatching sequence numbers. If any of the matching sequence numberverifications fail, the primary node 1 (304) may decline to perform therequest read. In some embodiments, the primary node 1 (304) may referthe requesting client to a membership group authority to obtain a latestup-to-date sequence number and membership information for the logicalvolume. In some embodiments, the primary node 1 (304) may provide alongwith a message declining to perform the read, a latest sequence numberand membership group information for the logical volume. In such cases,a client, such as client 1 (310), may then contact a primary nodeindicated in the membership group information associated with the latestsequence number for the logical volume to perform the read. The clientmay then direct the read request to a latest primary node.

If both of the messages 322 and 324 indicate that the secondary nodes306 and 308 locally store a matching sequence number as stored atprimary node 1 (304), the primary node may send read response 326 toclient 1 (310). Because, primary node 1 (304) has verified that no othernodes have superseded the primary node, the primary node 1 (304) canguarantee to the client 1 (310) that the data included in the readresponse 326 is the latest version of the data for the logical volume,(e.g. no other writes not reflected in the read data have modified thedata prior to the time it was read). In some embodiments, peerconfirmation messages, e.g. messages 318, 320, 322, and 324 may be smallcompared to a size of the data being read. For example the peerconfirmation messages may be approximately 200 bytes, as compared toread responses which may comprise, as an example 16 KB.

In some embodiments, a primary node, such as primary node 1 (304), mayread data from a local storage in order to fulfill a read request inparallel with sending and receiving peer confirmation messages, e.g.messages 318, 320, 322, and 324. Thus a read latency may be the longerof a) a time required to read the data from the local storage or b) atime required to send and receive peer confirmation messages. However,the latency will not be the sum of the two processes, because they areat least partially performed in parallel, in some embodiments.

As another example, client 2 (312) sends write request 328 to primarynode 1 (304). Primary node 1 (304) sends replication requests 330 and332 to secondary nodes 306 and 308 (e.g. nodes 2 and “N”). Thereplication requests indicate that primary node 1 (304) is a primarynode for the logical volume 1 and also indicate the sequence number(e.g. sequence number “1”) locally stored by the primary node. Theprimary node 1 (304) refrains from committing the requested write datauntil receiving verification messages 334 and 336 from secondary nodes306 and 308 (e.g. nodes 2 and “N”) that they too are on the samesequence number (e.g. sequence number “1”).

In some embodiments, the verification messages 334 and 336 may includeinformation indicating the sequence numbers match, or may includelocally stored sequence numbers locally stored by the secondary nodes.In such embodiments, primary node 1 (304) may perform a comparison todetermine the sequence numbers match. At 338, after it has been verifiedthat the primary node and secondary nodes are on the same sequencenumber, the primary node 1 sends a write confirmation 338 to client 2(312).

Note that the verification messages 334 and 336 may also indicate thatthe replicated write has been written to a storage of the secondarynodes 306 and 308. Thus, when primary node 1 (304) sends writeconfirmation message 228, it has been established that the secondarynodes 306 and 308 are on the same sequence number and have successfullystored the replicated write data.

FIGS. 4A-4C are diagrams illustrating interactions between nodes thatimplement a logical volume, a node that implements a membership groupauthority, and multiple clients attached to the logical volume, whereinthe interactions include a transition/failover from a primary replica toa secondary replica and the enablement of a replacement secondaryreplica, according to some embodiments.

FIG. 4A illustrates a logical volume 1 (402) implemented via node 1(404), node 2 (406), and node “N” (408) of a block-based storage system.For example, in some embodiments, nodes 1, 2, and “N” may be computingdevices of a block-based storage service, such as computing devices 106,108, and 110 of block-based storage service 104 illustrated in FIGS. 1and 2. FIG. 4 also illustrates client computing devices attached tological volume 1 (402). The client computing devices include client 1(410) and client 2 (436). In some embodiments any number of clientcomputing devices may be attached to a logical volume. In someembodiments, clients 1 and 2 may be client computing devices such asclient computing devices 136, 138, or 140 as illustrated in FIG. 1 ormay be compute instances of a virtual computing service, such asillustrated in FIG. 2. In some embodiments, similar componentsillustrated in FIG. 3 and FIGS. 4A-4C may perform the actions asillustrated in both FIG. 3 and FIGS. 4A-4C.

Initially, node 1 (404), node 2 (406), and node “N” (408) may locallystore sequence number “1” and membership group information indicatingthat node 1 is a primary node and nodes 2 and N are secondary nodes.Also, clients 1 (410) and 2 (436) may initially locally store sequencenumber “1” and membership group information indicating that node 1 is aprimary node and nodes 2 and N are secondary nodes.

At 412, client 1 (410) may attempt to send a read or write request tonode 1 (404), but the read or write request may not be received at node1 due to a broken connection 414, due to a failure of node 1, or due toanother reason. When the read request or write request 412 is notconfirmed within a threshold amount of time (e.g. the request has timedout), client 1 (410) may then attempt to connect to a secondary node forthe logical volume as indicated in the locally stored membership groupinformation for the logical volume locally stored by client 1. Forexample, at 416 client 1 (410) requests to connect to node 2 (406) viarequest to connect 416.

In some embodiments, the request to connect 416 may include the latestsequence number locally stored by a client computing device, such asclient 1 (410). The secondary node receiving the connection request mayverify that the sequence number included with the connection requestmatches the latest sequence number for the logical volume stored by thesecondary node receiving the connection request. If the sequence numbersdo not match, the secondary node may decline the connection request andrefer the client computing device to a membership group authority, suchas membership group authority 434, to obtain a latest sequence numberfor the logical volume. In some embodiments, a secondary node mayprovide the client computing device with the latest sequence numberstored by the secondary node and associated membership group informationfor the latest sequence number stored by the secondary node.

In some embodiments, a secondary node, in response to receiving aconnection request, may send a health check request to a health checkapplication programmatic interface (API) of a node last known to be aprimary node for a logical volume that is the subject of the connectionrequest. For example, node 2 (406) sends a health check request 418 tonode 1 (404). In some embodiments, the primary node, e.g. node 1 (404),is configured to supply health information to a requesting node inresponse to receiving a health check request at a health check API. Insome embodiments, the health information may include a number ofremaining client computing device that are connected to the logicalvolume via the node that is the subject of the health check request. Insome embodiments, the health information may include a number of clientcomputing devices that are associated with the logical volume (e.g. allpossible connections whether or not they are currently connected). Insome embodiments, the health information may indicate whether a clientcomputing device with a greatest volume of IO traffic directed towardsthe logical volume remains connected to the primary node that is thesubject of the health check request. In some embodiments, the healthinformation may indicate a last time an IO operation was successfullyperformed by the node that is the subject of the health check request.In some embodiments, the health information may indicate a latestsequence number locally stored by the primary node that is the subjectof the health check request. In some embodiments, the health informationmay indicate whether a rate pause has been invoked, wherein a rate pauseis invoked if a number of fail overs for a given volume performed in agiven unit of time has exceeded a threshold number of failovers per unittime.

In some embodiments, a secondary node may determine whether or not toinitiate a failover based on received health information in response toa health check request. For example, in some embodiments, as long as atleast one client computing device remains connected to a primary node, asecondary node may refrain from initiating a transition/failover. Inother embodiments, a secondary node may refrain from initiating atransition/failover if a majority of possible connections remainconnected to the primary node, and otherwise proceed with initiating atransition/failover. In some embodiments, a secondary node may determinewhether or not to initiate a transition/failover based on whether one ormore client computing devices with high or highest IO volumes directedto the logical volume remain connected to the primary node. In someembodiments, if no response is received from a primary node within athreshold amount of time of issuing the health check request, thesecondary node may assume the primary node is offline or otherwise inbad health and may proceed with initiating a failover. In someembodiments, a transition may include a primary replica and a secondaryreplica trading roles, such that the primary replica becomes a secondaryreplica and the secondary replica becomes the primary replica. In someembodiments, a transition may include a failover wherein the secondaryreplica assumes a role of primary replica, initially with a reducedmembership group (e.g. without the previous primary replica in themembership group) and wherein a replacement secondary replica is thenadded to the membership group.

For example, at 420 secondary node 2 (406) receives an indication thatthere are no client computing devices remaining connected to logicalvolume 1 (402) via primary node 1 (404). In response to determiningthere are no remaining connections, the secondary node 2 (406)determines to initiate a transition/failover for logical volume 1 (402).To initiate the transition/failover, the secondary node 2 (406)increments its locally stored sequence number by “1” and proposes a newsequence number “2” with associated membership group of node 2 (406) asthe primary node and node “N” (408) as the secondary node. This is doneat 422. Because the proposed sequence number has not been previouslyauthorized for logical volume 1 (402), membership group authority 434authorizes the proposed sequence number and sends authorization message424 back to node 2 (406) indicating that the proposed new sequencenumber of “2” has been authorized. Note that is some embodiments, inresponse to a health check response indicating no remaining connections,node 2 (406) may initiate a “flip” transition. To do this, node 2 (406)may propose a new incremented sequence number along with membershipgroup information indicating reversed roles for the primary andsecondary replica nodes. For example, node 2 (406) may propose sequencenumber “2” with membership group information 2, 1, indicating that node2 is to be primary and node 1 is to be secondary.

In response, at 426, node 2 (406) locally stores the new authorizedsequence number of “2” and the membership group information associatedwith sequence number “2.” Node 2 (406) also sends, at 428, the newauthorized sequence number “2” to other members of the membership groupassociated with sequence number “2”, such as node “N” (408). At 430,node “N” (408) locally stores the new authorized sequence number 2 andassociated membership group information. At 432, node 2 (406) indicatesto client 1 (410) that the requested connection has been granted andsends client 1 (410) the new authorized sequence number “2” andassociated membership group information. The client 1 (410) locallystores the new sequence number “2” and the associated membership groupinformation for sequence number “2.”

FIG. 4B shows nodes 1 (404), 2 (406), and “N” (408) with the updatedsequence number and associated membership group information, whereinnode 1 (404) is no longer the primary node for logical volume 1 (402).Also nodes 2 (406) and “N” (408) have been updated to show sequencenumber “2” and its associated membership group information (e.g. M.G.=2,N). Note that now node 2 (406) is the primary node for logical volume 1(402) and there is only one secondary node, node “N”, as opposed to twosecondary nodes as shown in FIG. 4A. Though, as shown in FIG. 4C theloss of a replica node causes a replacement replica to be configured.While not shown in FIG. 4B, a replacement replica node may have beenconfigured prior to receiving an additional IO, or after receiving anadditional IO, such as the write request shown in FIG. 4B.

At 438, client 2 (436) sends 10 request 438 to node 1 (404), which waspreviously the primary node for logical volume 1 (402), but has beensuperseded by node 2 (406). Node 1 (404) then sends a peer confirmationmessage 440 to node 2 (406). While not shown, node 1 may also send apeer confirmation message to node “N” (408). At 442, a return messagefrom node 2 (406) indicates that the sequence numbers do not match, e.g.node 2 is on sequence number “2” while client 2 (436) and node 1 (404)are still on sequence number “1.” In response, at 444, node 1 declinesto perform the requested read.

In some embodiments, node 1 (404) may report the new sequence number “2”and associated group information received from node 2 (406) to client 2(436). However, in some embodiments, node 1 (404) may simply decline toperform the requested read and client 2 (436) may contact membershipgroup authority 434 to obtain a latest sequence number and associatedmembership group information for logical volume 1 (402). For example, at446 client 2 (436) requests the latest sequence number and membershipgroup information for logical volume 1 (402) from membership groupauthority 434. And, at 448 membership group authority 434 replies withsequence number “2” and its associated membership group information.Client 2 (436) locally stores the new authorized sequence number “2” andits associated membership group information.

At 450, client 2 then requests to connect to node 2 (406), wherein therequest includes sequence number “2” (either supplied from node 1 orobtained from the membership group authority 434). In response, node 2determines that sequence number “2” included with the connection requestmatches sequence number “2” locally stored by node 2 and at 452 grantsthe connection request.

At 454, client 2 (436) sends 10 request 454 to node 2 (406), node 2sends peer confirmation message 456 to node “N” (408) and receivesconfirmation reply 458. Node 2 (406) then performs the requested 10 andsends confirmation 460 to client 2 (436).

In some embodiments, if a secondary node is behind a primary node inregard to sequence number, instead of declining to perform a read orwrite, the secondary node may update its locally stored sequence numberin response to receiving a peer confirmation message with a greatersequence number than the sequence number locally stored by the secondarynode.

FIG. 4C shows actions taken in response to a replacement secondary nodebeing made available, wherein the replacement secondary node makes upfor the failure of node 1 (404) as shown in FIG. 4A.

At 462, primary node 2 (406) request a placement decision from aplacement component of block-based storage service control plane 130. Inresponse, at 464, the control plane 130 provides primary node 2 (406)with an indication of a replacement candidate to store a replacementsecondary replica for logical volume 1 (402). For example, control plane130 identifies node N+1 (466) as a replacement candidate to store areplacement replica for logical volume 1 (402).

In response, at 468, node 2 (406) re-mirrors volume data stored forlogical volume 1 (402) on node 2 (406) (e.g. the volume data of theprimary replica) to the replacement replica candidate node N+1 (466). At470, node 2 (406) receives an indication that the volume data for volume1 (402) has been successfully re-mirrored to node N+1 (466), such thatnode N+1 (466) now stores a secondary replica of logical volume 1 (402).

In response, at 472, primary node 2 (406) proposes a new sequence number“3” and associated membership group information that includes node N+1(466) as a replacement secondary node to membership group authority 434and at 474 receives confirmation that sequence number “3” has beenauthorized and the updated membership group information for sequencenumber “3” has been stored at the membership group authority 434. Inresponse, at 476, node 2 (406) updates its locally stored sequencenumber and membership group information to sequence number “3” and themembership group information associated with sequence number “3.”

At 478 and 482 primary node 2 (406) sends the new authorized sequencenumber “3” and associated updated membership group information to othermembers of the membership group, such as nodes N+1 (466) and “N” (408).At 480, node N (408) locally stores the new authorized sequence number“3” and its associated membership group information. Also, at 484, node“N+1” (466) locally stores the new authorized sequence number “3” andits associated membership group information.

At 486 and 488, node 2 (406) provides the new sequence number “3” andits associated membership group information to connected clients 1 (410)and 2 (436). Alternatively, clients 1 and 2 may be made aware of the newsequence number “3” in response to a declined IO request and/or byrequesting a latest sequence number and associated membership groupinformation from membership group authority 434.

FIGS. 5A-5H are diagrams illustrating interactions between nodes thatimplement a logical volume, a node that implements a membership groupauthority, and multiple clients attached to the logical volume, whereina first connection failure does not trigger a transition/failover due togood health of a primary replica node and a second connection failurecauses a transition/failover from a primary replica node to a secondaryreplica node and the enablement of a replacement secondary replica node,according to some embodiments.

FIG. 5A-H illustrates a logical volume implemented via node 1 (506) andnode 2 (508) of a block-based storage system. For example, in someembodiments, nodes 1 and 2 may be computing devices of a block-basedstorage service, such as computing devices 106, 108 or 110 ofblock-based storage service 104 illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG. 5also illustrates client computing devices attached to the logicalvolume. The client computing devices include client computing device 1(502) and client computing device 2 (504). In some embodiments anynumber of client computing devices may be attached to a logical volume.In some embodiments, client computing devices 1 and 2 may be clientcomputing devices such as client computing devices 136, 138, or 140 asillustrated in FIG. 1 or may be compute instances of a virtual computingservice, such as illustrated in FIG. 2. In some embodiments, similarcomponents illustrated in FIG. 3, FIGS. 4A-4C, and FIG. 5A-5H mayperform the actions as illustrated in all of FIG. 3, FIGS. 4A-4C, and

FIG. 5A-5H.

As shown in FIG. 5A, client computing device 1 (502) may be connected toa logical volume via connection 516 to node 1 (506) storing primaryreplica 512. Additionally, client computing device 2 (504) may beconnected to the logical volume via connection 518 to node 1 (506)storing primary replica 512. Also, node 2 (508) may store secondaryreplica 514. In some embodiments additional nodes may store additionalsecondary replicas.

Also, under normal conditions (e.g. no failure or no in progresstransition/failover) node 1 (506) and node 2 (508) may be on a samesequence number, e.g. sequence number “1” that corresponds with a latestsequence number for the logical volume stored by membership groupauthority 510. Each member of the membership group, e.g. node 1 (506)and node 2 (508), may locally store the latest sequence number for thelogical volume that has been presented to the respective member of themembership group (e.g. node 1 (506) or node 2 (508), respectively).While not shown, client computing device 1 (502) and client computingdevice (504) may also locally store sequence number “1” and membershipgroup information associated with sequence number “1.”

In FIG. 5B a failure or network issue may have caused the connectionbetween client computing device 1 (502) and node 1 (506) to becomeunavailable (520). However, client computing device 2 (504) may remainconnected to node 1 (506) via connection 518.

In response to the loss of connection 520, client computing device 1(502) may attempt to connect to a secondary node indicated in themembership group information for sequence number “1” that is locallystored by client computing device 1 (502). For example, client computingdevice 1 (502) sends connection request 522 to node 2 (508), wherein theconnection request includes sequence number “1” indicating that sequencenumber “1” is the latest sequence number stored by client computingdevice 1 (502). As an initial matter, node 2 (508) may verify thatsequence number “1” matches a latest sequence number for the logicalvolume locally stored by node 2 (508). If the sequence numbers do notmatch, node 2 (508) may refer client computing device 1 (502) tomembership group authority 510 to obtain a latest sequence number forthe logical volume, or if node 2 (508) locally stores a later sequencenumber, node 2 may provide the later sequence number and associatedmembership group information to client computing device 1 (502).

In FIG. 5C, node 2 (508), in response to receiving the request toconnect 522 from client computing device 1 (502) determines whether ornot to initiate a transition/failover. In order to determine whether ornot to initiate a transition/failover, node 2 (508) may send a healthcheck request to a health check API of node 1 (506). For example, node 2(508) sends health check request 524 to a health check API of node 1(506) and receives health information for node 1 (506) in a responsemessage 526. As an example, the health information indicates that node 1(506) remains connected to client computing device 2 (504) viaconnection 518. Thus, node 2 (508) determines based on the existence ofan active connection to node 1 (506) to not proceed with initiating atransition/failover for the logical volume. As discussed above, in someembodiments a secondary node may utilize other criteria to determinewhether or not to proceed with initiating a transition/fail over, suchas whether a majority of client computing devices remain connected to aprimary node, whether the primary node remains connected to a clientcomputing device generating the most IO traffic, etc. In someembodiments, if node 1 (506) returns health information indicating thata problem exists outside of node 1 (e.g. a network problem, as anexample), node 2 (508) may determine to initiate a transition to fliproles with node 1, wherein node 2 assumes a role of primary replica andnode 1 is demoted to secondary replica. In some embodiments, if node 1(506) returns health information (or fails to reply) such that it isindicated that a problem is specific to node 1 (e.g. the serverimplementing node 1 is failed), node 2 (508) may initiate a failover, asopposed to a flip transition.

In FIG. 5D, another failure or network issue has caused the connectionbetween client computing device 2 (504) and node 1 (506) to be broken(528) such that there are not any remaining client computing devicesconnected to the logical volume via node 1 (506). In response to theloss of connection 518 to node 1, client computing device 2 (504) mayrequest to connect to a secondary node for the logical volume asindicated in membership group information locally stored by clientcomputing device 2 (504). For example, client computing device 2 (504)sends connection request 530 to node 2 (508) storing secondary replica514. The connection request 530 includes sequence number “1” which isthe latest sequence number for the logical volume stored by clientcomputing device 2 (504). In response to receiving the connectionrequest, node 2 (508) may verify that sequence number “1” included withconnection request 530 matches sequence number “1” that is locallystored by node 2 (508) for the logical volume.

In FIG. 5E node 2 (508), in response to receiving connection request530, determines whether or not to initiate a transition or failover forthe logical volume. In order to determine whether or not to initiate atransition or failover, node 2 (508) sends a health check request 532 tothe health check API of node 1 (506). In response, node 1 (506) replieswith health information 534 indicating that there are not any remainingconnections between node 1 (506) and client computing devices attachedto the logical volume. Alternatively, if the broken connections are dueto a failure of node 1 (506), there may be no reply received in responseto the health check request 532. Based on not receiving a reply orreceiving health information indicating no remaining connections, node 2(508) determines to proceed with initiating a transition or failover forthe logical volume.

To initiate a failover, at 536 node 2 (508) propose a new sequencenumber “2” to membership group authority 510 along with associatedmembership group information indicating node 2 (508) will be a soloprimary for the logical volume. As sequence number “2” is the nextnumber in the sequence (e.g. is 1 greater than the previous latestsequence number) and has not already been authorized for the logicalvolume, membership group authority 510 authorizes sequence number “2”and sends authorization message 528 back to node 2 (508). To initiate aflip transition (not shown) node 2 (508) would propose a new sequencenumber “2” to membership group authority 510 along with associatedmembership group information indicating that node 2 (508) will be aprimary and node 1 (506) will be a secondary for the logical volume.

In FIG. 5F, node 2 (508) now stores primary replica 550 for the logicalvolume and establishes connection 540 between node 2 (508), now actingas a primary node for the logical volume, and client computing device 2(504).

Additionally, client computing device 1 (502) queries (542) membershipgroup authority 510 for a latest sequence number and membership groupinformation for the logical volume. In response membership groupauthority 510 sends reply 544 indicating sequence number “2” is thelatest sequence number for the logical volume and node 2 (508) is a soloprimary node for the logical volume.

Client computing device 1 (502) then sends a connection request 546 tonode 2 (as it is indicated in the latest membership group information asstoring the primary replica for the logical volume). The connectionrequest 546 includes sequence number “2” as the latest sequence numberlocally stored by client computing device 1 (502). Node 2 (508)determines that this sequence number matches the latest sequence numberlocally stored by node 2 (508), and since node 2 (508) is a now aprimary node for the logical volume, node 2 (508) accepts the connectionrequest and establishes connection 548 between node 2 (508) and clientcomputing device 1 (502).

FIG. 5G illustrates a secondary replacement replica being establishedfor the logical volume. For example node 3 (552) has been designated tostore secondary replica 566 which replaces the secondary replica 514that was stored on node 2 (508) and converted into primary replica 550.

Node 3 (552), or a control plane of the block-based storage service,sends a notification 554 to node 2 (508) now storing primary replica550, that secondary replica 566 stored on node 3 (552) is ready to beput in service and start accepting replicated writes. In response, node2 (508) proposes (556) a new sequence number “3” to membership groupauthority 510 and associated membership group information indicatingthat node 2 (508) stores a primary replica for the logical volume andnode 3 (552) stores a secondary replica for the logical volume. Becausethe proposed sequence number is the next sequence number in sequence andhas not already been authorized for the logical volume, membership groupauthority 510 authorizes sequence number “3” and sends authorizationmessage 558 back to node 2 (508).

Node 2 (508), then provides the new authorized sequence number “3” andassociated membership group information to other members of themembership group. For example, at 560 node 2 (508) provides sequencenumber “3” and related membership group information to node 3 (552).

Also at 562 and 564, node 2 (508) provides the new updated sequencenumber “3” and associated membership group information to connectedclient computing devices 1 (502) and 2 (504). Alternatively, node 2(508) may drop the existing connections 540 and 548, which would causeclient computing device 1 (502) and client computing device 2 (504) toseek updated sequence numbers and associated membership groupinformation from membership group authority 510. Client computing device1 (502) and client computing device 2 (504) may retry connections tonode 2 (508) with the updated sequence number “3” and be reconnected tonode 2 (508).

In FIG. 5H client computing device 2 (504) sends a read or write request568 to connected primary node 2 (508). In response node 2 (508) sendspeer confirmation message 570 to node 3 (552) to verify that node 3 isalso on sequence number “3”, which matches the latest sequence numberlocally stored by node 2 (508). In response node 3 (552) sends a peerconfirmation message 572 confirming that node 3 (552) is also onsequence number “3.” After verifying that all members of the membershipgroup are on the same sequence number, node 2 (508) replies to the readrequest at 574.

FIGS. 6A-6E are diagrams illustrating interactions between nodes thatimplement a logical volume, a node that implements a membership groupauthority, and multiple clients attached to the logical volume, whereindifferent clients drive different nodes to assume a role of primaryreplica node and a membership group authority avoids unnecessary failovers due to the computing nodes, according to various embodiments.

FIG. 6 illustrates a logical volume implemented via node 1 (608), node 2(610), and node 3 (612) of a block-based storage system. For example, insome embodiments, nodes 1, 2, and 3 may be computing devices of ablock-based storage service, such as computing devices 106, 108 and 110of block-based storage service 104 illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG. 6also illustrates client computing devices attached to the logicalvolume. The client computing devices include client computing device 1(602), client computing device 2 (604), and client computing device 3(606). In some embodiments any number of client computing devices may beattached to a logical volume. In some embodiments, client computingdevices 1, 2, and 3 may be client computing devices such as clientcomputing devices 136, 138, and 140 as illustrated in FIG. 1 or may becompute instances of a virtual computing service, such as illustrated inFIG. 2. In some embodiments, similar components illustrated in FIG. 3,FIGS. 4A-4C, FIG. 5A-5H, and FIGS. 61-6E may perform the actions asillustrated in all of FIG. 3, FIGS. 4A-4C, FIG. 5A-5H, and FIGS. 6A-6E.

In FIG. 6A, client computing device 1 (602), client computing device 2(604), and client computing device (606) are all connected to a logicalvolume via node 1 (608) storing primary replica 614. Additionally, node2 (610) stores secondary replica 616 and node 3 (612) stores secondaryreplica 618. Nodes 1 (608), 2 (610), and 3 (612) all locally storesequence number “1” and membership group information indicating node 1is a primary node and nodes 2 and 3 are secondary nodes. Additionally,membership group authority 620 stores sequence number “1” as a latestsequence number for the logical volume and stores associated membershipgroup information indicating that node 1 is a primary node for thelogical volume and nodes 2 and 3 are secondary nodes for the logicalvolume.

In FIG. 6B a failure or network issue has caused client computingdevices 1 (602), 2 (604), and 3 (606) to lose their respectiveconnections to node 1 (608).

In FIG. 6C client computing devices 1 (602) and 2 (604) both try toconnect to node 2 (610) by sending connection requests 622 and 624 tonode 2 (610). However, client computing device 3 (606) tries to connectto node 3 (612) by sending connection request 626. In some situationsdifferent client computing devices may send connection requests todifferent secondary nodes due to network issues. For example, a networkpartition caused by a networking failure may partition client computingdevices 1 (602) and 2 (604) along with node 2 (610) on one side of anetwork partition and client computing device 3 (606) and node 3 (612)on the other side of the network partition.

In some circumstances, the fact that different client computing deviceshave tried to connect to different secondary nodes may set up a racebetween the secondary nodes to see which secondary node can becomeprimary. However, as discussed below, the fact that a block-basedstorage system requires a node requesting a new sequence number topresent an incremented sequence number that is one greater than alocally stored sequence number to a membership group authority that onlyauthorizes sequence numbers that have not yet been authorized, mayprevent a scenario wherein the racing nodes drive excessive flip-flopsbetween primary and secondary. For example, both nodes will be proposinga sequence number of “2”, such that the first node to win the race tothe membership group authority will be authorized for sequence number“2.” The second place node in the race will not be authorized forsequence number “2” because it will have already been taken.Furthermore, the second place node will not propose sequence number “3”because it has not yet received sequence number “2” from the node thatwon the race.

For example, at 628 node 2 (610) proposes sequence number “2” withmembership group information indicating node 2 is primary and node 3 issecondary to membership group authority 620. Because node 2 (610) is thefirst to the membership group authority such that membership groupauthority 620 has not already authorized sequence number “2,” themembership group authority authorizes sequence number “2” to node 2(610) and stores membership group information indicating that node 2(610) is primary and node 3 (612) is secondary. Membership groupauthority 620 sends authorization message 630 to node 2 (610) indicatingthat sequence number “2” has been authorized for node 2 (610) to beprimary node.

At 632, node 3's proposal for sequence number “2” and associatedmembership group information indicating node 3 (612) as primary and node2 (610) as secondary arrives to membership group authority 620 afternode 2's proposal for sequence number “2.” Since sequence number “2” hasalready been authorized, membership group authority 620 declines toauthorize sequence number “2” to node 3 (612) with node 3 as primary.

In FIG. 6D, node 2 (610) assumes the role of primary node storingprimary replica 636 (where node 2 previously stored secondary replica616). Node 2 (610) also provides the updated latest sequence number andmembership group information to other members of the membership group,such as node 3 (612). Additionally, node 2 (610) establishes connections638 and 640 between client computing devices 1 (602) and 2 (604) andnode 2 (610), respectively.

In some embodiments, client computing device 3 (606) may retry aconnection (642) with node 3 (612). Note that client computing device 3(606) is still on sequence number “1” because its request 626 to connectto node 3 drive node 3 to propose sequence number “2” at 632, but therequest was rejected because sequence number “2” was already authorized.In some embodiments, node 3 (612) may provide an updated sequence numberand associated membership group information in a connection rejectedmessage 644. The requesting client computing device, such as clientcomputing device 3 (606) may then retry the connected another time withthe provided updated sequence number and direct the request to a primarynode as indicated in updated membership group information to establish aconnection to a newly promoted primary node.

In some embodiments, a client computing device, such as client computingdevice 3 (606) may additionally or alternatively request an updatedsequence number and associated membership group information from amembership group authority in response to a rejected connection request.

In FIG. 6E, client computing device 3 (606) may query (646) membershipgroup authority 620 for the latest sequence number for the logicalvolume and associated membership group information. In responsemembership group authority 620 may provide (648) authorized sequencenumber “2” with membership group information indicating node 2 is theprimary node and node 3 is the secondary node. Client computing device606 may then request to connect to node 2 (610) via connect request 650that includes sequence number “2.” If successful, connection 652 may beestablished. In some embodiments, wherein node 3 (612) provides updatedmembership group information and a latest sequence number with arejected connection request (e.g. 644), querying the membership groupauthority (e.g. 646 and 648) may be omitted.

However, if a network partition still prohibits client computing device3 (606) from communicating with node 2 (610), client computing device606 may request to connect to node 3 (612). However, node 3 will performa health check to a health check API of node 2 and upon determining thatnode 2 is connected to client computing device 1 (602) and clientcomputing device 2 (604), decline to proceed with initiating atransition/failover

FIG. 7 is a diagrams illustrating interactions between nodes thatimplement a logical volume, a node that implements a membership groupauthority, and multiple clients attached to the logical volume, whereina node storing a secondary replica fails and a replacement secondaryreplica node is enabled for the logical volume, according to someembodiments.

FIG. 7 illustrates a logical volume implemented via node 1 (704), node 2(706), and node 3 (708) of a block-based storage system. Additionallynode 4 (712) stores a replacement secondary replica for the logicalvolume. For example, in some embodiments, nodes 1, 2, 3, and 4 may becomputing devices of a block-based storage service, such as any ofcomputing devices 106, 108 and 110 of block-based storage service 104illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG. 7 also illustrates a client computingdevice 702 attached to the logical volume. In some embodiments anynumber of client computing devices may be attached to a logical volume.In some embodiments, client computing device 702 may be a clientcomputing device such as any of client computing devices 136, 138, or140 as illustrated in FIG. 1 or may be compute instances of a virtualcomputing service, such as illustrated in FIG. 2. In some embodiments,similar components illustrated in FIG. 3, FIGS. 4A-4C, FIG. 5A-5H, FIGS.61-6E, FIG. 7 may perform the actions as illustrated in all of FIG. 3,FIGS. 4A-4C, FIG. 5A-5H, and FIGS. 6A-6E, FIG. 7.

At 714 client 702 sends a read or write request to primary node 704.Primary node 704 sends peer confirmation messages 716 and 718 tosecondary nodes 706 and 708. Primary node 704 receives a confirmationmessage 722 from secondary node 708 indicating matching sequencenumbers, but receives no reply (720) for secondary node 706 and averification confirmation reply (722) from node 3 (708) Thus, it isdetermined that secondary node 706 is unavailable or failed. In responseprimary node 704 proposes new sequence number 2 (724) to membershipgroup authority 710 along with membership group information leavingunresponsive node 2 out of the membership group. Membership groupauthority 710 authorizes sequence number 2 and sends authorizationmessage 726 to primary node 704.

At 728, primary node responds to client 702 either confirming the writeor providing the read data along with new sequence number “2”.

At 730, primary node 704 re-mirrors the primary replica to node 4 (712)that is being configured to store a replacement secondary replica forthe logical volume. At 732, node 4 (712) indicates that the re-mirroringhas been completed. In response, at 734, primary node 704 proposes a newsequence number “3” to the membership group authority 710 along withmembership group information indicating node 1 (704) stores a primaryreplica for the logical volume and nodes 3 (708) and 4 (712) storesecondary replicas for the logical volume. At 736 the membership groupauthority send an authorization message indicating that sequence number“3” has been authorized for node 1 (704) to function as primary andnodes 3 (708) and 4 (712) to function as secondary nodes.

FIG. 8A is a flow diagram illustrating the authorization of sequencenumbers for computing devices hosting replicas of a logical volume,according to some embodiments.

At 802, a computing device of a block-based storage service, such as aresource host, receives a placement decision from a control plane of theblock-based storage service indicating that the computing device is tohost a primary replica for a logical volume. Initially the logicalvolume may be hosted by a single primary node (e.g. the computing deviceindicated in the placement decision) and an initial sequence number of“0” may be assigned for the logical volume with an associated membershipgroup comprising the single primary node.

As another route to hosting a primary replica, at 804, a computingdevice of a block-based storage service which is currently hosting asecondary replica for a logical volume may receive a request from aclient computing device to connect to the logical volume via thecomputing device hosting the secondary replica of the logical volume.

At 806, the computing device hosting the secondary replica sends ahealth check request to another computing device of the block-basedstorage system hosting or last known to host a primary replica for thelogical volume. The computing device hosting the secondary replicalocally stores a latest sequence number for the logical volume andassociated membership group information. The computing device hostingthe secondary replica sends the health check request to the computingdevice identified in the locally stored membership group information ashosting the primary replica for the logical volume.

At 808, the computing device hosting the secondary replica determines,based on provided health information received in response to the healthcheck request sent at 806, whether the health of the computing devicehosting the primary replica for the logical volume satisfies one or moreconditions. For example, in some embodiments a condition may be that ifat least one client computing device remains connected with an activeconnection to the computing device hosting the primary replica, then thecomputing device hosting the secondary replica refrains from initiatinga transition/failover. In some embodiments, a condition may be that acomputing device storing a secondary replica refrains from initiating atransition/failover if a majority of client computing devices remainconnected with active connections to the computing device hosting theprimary replica. In some embodiments, if a connection to a clientcomputing device generating a greater IO load than other clientcomputing devices remains connected to the computing device hosting theprimary replica, the computing device hosting the secondary replica mayrefrain from initiating a transition/failover.

At 810, if the health of the computing device hosting the primaryreplica satisfies the one or more conditions, e.g. is determined to havegood health, the secondary computing device refrains from initiating atransition/failover.

At 812, in response to a new placement decision, or in response to adecision to initiate a transition/failover, a computing device to becomea primary node for a logical volume proposes to a membership groupauthority a new sequence number. For example, a computing device of ablock-based storage system (e.g. a node) receiving an initial placementsuch that the computing device stores a primary replica for a logicalvolume (e.g. primary node) may propose a sequence number of “0” andassociated membership group information indicating that the computingdevice is a sole member of a membership group associated with sequencenumber “0.” Also, a secondary node attempting to assume a role ofprimary node may propose a sequence number that is greater than alocally stored sequence number by “1.” For example, a secondary nodelocally storing a sequence number of “1” may propose a new sequencenumber of “2” along with associated membership group informationindicating that the secondary node will become the primary node for thelogical volume.

In some embodiments, the addition of a new client computing device beingconnected to a logical volume may trigger an updated membership groupand sequence number to be authorized and distributed to members of amembership group. For example, for an initial placement and firstconnection, a new sequence number and associated membership groupinformation may be authorized. However, in some embodiments, if a clientconnects to a primary replica that is already connected to anotherclient, the current sequence number and membership group informationlocally stored by the primary node may be provided to the other clientconnecting to the primary node without the sequence number beingincremented and without requesting a new authorization from a membershipgroup authority.

At 814, the membership group authority indicates to the computing deviceof the block-based storage system (e.g. node) whether or not theproposed sequence number has been authorized. In some embodiments, ifthe proposed sequence number is a next sequence number in a sequence andhas not already been authorized, the membership group authority willauthorize the proposed sequence number.

At 816, in response to being informed that the proposed sequence numberhas not been authorized, the computing device (e.g. node) attempting toassume a role of primary node for the logical volume abandons ordiscontinues the attempt to assume the role of primary node for thelogical volume.

Conversely, at 818, in response to receiving an indication that theproposed sequence number has been authorized, the computing deviceattempting to assume the role of primary node locally stores theauthorized proposed sequence number and assumes the role of primary nodefor the logical volume. To do this, at 820, the computing device (nowprimary node) provides the new authorized sequence number and associatedmembership group information to other computing devices of the updatedmembership group. This causes the other members of the updatedmembership group to recognize the computing device (now primary node) asthe primary node for the logical volume. Also, at 822, the computingdevice (now primary node) provides the authorized new sequence numberand associated updated membership group information to client computingdevices of the logical volume.

Alternatively or additionally, other nodes of the block-based storageservice may refer the client computing devices to the membership groupauthority to obtain a latest sequence number and associated updatedmembership group information. For example, if a client computing deviceattempts to send an IO request to a previous primary node that has beensuperseded by the computing device (now primary node), the previousprimary node will not be able to pass a peer confirmation (e.g.verification of matching sequence numbers) in response to the IO becausethe previous secondary node that has now been promoted to primary nodestores a later sequence number, such that the sequence numbers will notmatch during the peer confirmation. This may cause the previous primarynode that has been superseded to decline to perform the IO and refer theclient computing device to the membership group authority to obtain alatest sequence number and associated updated membership groupinformation for the logical volume. As another alternative, the previousprimary node that has been superseded may provide the latest sequencenumber received during the peer confirmation to the client computingdevice, such that the client computing device can then attempt toconnect to the computing device that has been promoted to be a primarynode for the logical volume.

FIG. 8B is a flow diagram illustrating the use of sequence numbers bycomputing devices hosting replicas of a logical volume when respondingto a read request, according to some embodiments.

At 832, a computing device of a block-based storage service storing aprimary replica (e.g. a primary node) receives a read request from aclient computing device connected to the primary node.

At 836, the primary node may send one or more peer confirmation messagesto other members of a membership group associated with the sequencenumber locally stored by the primary node. In some embodiments, theprimary node may compare its locally stored sequence number to sequencenumbers returned from other members of the membership group.Alternatively, in some embodiments, a primary node may provide itslatest sequence number to other members of the membership group andrequest confirmation from the other members that their locally storedsequence numbers match the sequence number locally stored by the primarynode.

In parallel with sending the peer confirmation messages at 836, at 834the primary node may read the requested read data from a local storageof the primary node. For example, the primary node may not wait toreceive confirmation messages from peer members of the membership groupbefore reading the requested read data from a local storage of theprimary node. This may reduce latency as the latency of the read requestwill be dictated by the longest one of the two tasks of confirmingmatching sequence numbers with peers and reading the requested data. Insome embodiments, the latency for a read may not be the sum of the timerequired to obtain peer confirmation and read the requested read data asthese tasks are performed at least partially in parallel.

At 838, the primary node refrains from sending the requested read datato the requesting client computing device until confirmation is obtainedthat the peer members of the membership group that locally storedsequence numbers match the sequence number locally stored by the primarynode.

At 840, it is determined whether the peers locally store matchingsequence numbers. If the peers do not locally store matching sequencenumbers as the sequence number locally stored by the primary node, at842 the primary node sends a message to the requesting client computingdevice that the read request has been declined.

At 844, in response to determining that the peer members of themembership group locally store matching sequence numbers as the primarynode and as included with the read request, the primary node sends therequested read data to the client computing device requesting the read.In some embodiments, a primary node may require confirmation from allpeer nodes of a membership group that all the peer nodes store a samematching sequence number as the primary node before sending therequested read data. This may prevent a stale read, wherein a nodeperforming a read has been superseded.

FIG. 8C is a flow diagram illustrating the use of sequence numbers bycomputing devices hosting replicas of a logical volume when respondingto a write request, according to some embodiments.

At 852, a computing device of a block-based storage service storing aprimary replica (e.g. a primary node) receives a write request from aclient computing device connected to the primary node.

At 854 the primary node may send a replicated write to other members ofa membership group associated with the sequence number (e.g. secondarynodes). The secondary nodes may verify that the sequence number includedwith the replicated write matches a sequence number locally stored bythe secondary nodes.

At 856, the primary node refrains from sending a write confirmation tothe requesting client computing device until confirmation is obtainedthat the peer members of the membership group (e.g. secondary nodes)locally store matching sequence numbers. Also, in some embodiments, theprimary node may refrain from sending the write confirmation to therequesting client computing device until confirmation is obtained thatthe secondary nodes have successfully written the replicated write.

At 858, it is determined whether the peers (e.g. secondary nodes)locally store matching sequence numbers as the primary node. If thepeers do not locally store matching sequence numbers as the sequencenumber locally stored by the primary node, at 860 the primary node sendsa message to the requesting client computing device that the writerequest has been declined.

At 862, in response to determining that the peer members of themembership group (e.g. secondary nodes) locally store matching sequencenumbers as the primary node, the primary node commits the requestedwrite and sends a write confirmation message to the client computingdevice requesting the write. As mentioned above, in some embodiments,other conditions may need to be satisfied before the write is committed.For example, the primary node may refrain from committing the writeuntil confirmation has been obtained that the secondary nodes havesuccessfully written the replicated write. In some embodiments, aprimary node may refrain from committing a write until confirmation fromall peer nodes has been received that all of the peer nodes store a samematching sequence number as the primary node.

FIG. 9 is a flow diagram illustrating a computing device storing asecondary replica requesting a health check of a primary replica beforeinitiating a transition/failover, according to some embodiments.

At 902, a computing device of a block-based storage service storing asecondary replica (e.g. a secondary node) receives a connection requestfrom a client computing device. In some embodiments, the connectionrequest includes a latest sequence number locally stored by the clientcomputing device submitting the connection request.

At 904, the secondary node sends a request for health information of aprimary node to a health check API of the primary node. The secondarynode determines which node to send the health check request to based onlocally stored membership group information locally stored by thesecondary node.

At 906, the secondary node determines whether or not a response to thehealth check request has been received within a threshold amount oftime, e.g. a time out period. If a response to the health check is notreceived within the threshold amount of time, the secondary nodeproceeds with initiating failover at 908. If a response is receivedwithin the threshold amount of time, at 910, the secondary nodedetermines whether the health of the primary node, as indicated in thereceived health information, satisfies one or more health conditions. Ifit is determined at 912 that the health of the primary node does notsatisfy the health conditions (e.g. the primary node is in bad health),at 914 the secondary nodes proceeds to initiate a transition/failover.However, if it is determined at 912 that the health of the primary nodedoes satisfy the one or more health conditions (e.g. the primary node isin good health), at 916, the secondary node refrains from initiating atransition/failover.

FIG. 10 is a flow diagram illustrating a fail over process, according tosome embodiments.

To initiate a failover, a secondary node, at 1002, proposes a newsequence number to a membership group authority along with updatedmembership group information indicating that the secondary node will beassuming a role of primary node for the logical volume. The proposedsequence number is “1” greater than the latest sequence number locallystored by the secondary node for the logical volume. In other words thesecondary node increments its locally stored sequence number andproposes the incremented sequence number as a new sequence number to themembership group authority. If the proposed sequence number has notalready been authorized, the membership group authority will authorizethe proposed sequence number and store in a membership group andsequence number store of the membership group authority the newlyauthorized sequence number and associated updated membership groupinformation.

At 1004, the secondary node receives an indication from the membershipgroup authority that the proposed sequence number and associated updatedmembership group information indicating the secondary node is to assumethe role of primary node has been authorized.

At 1006, the secondary node assumes the role of primary node for thelogical volume. This may mean that the secondary replica already storedby the secondary node is designated as a primary replica for the logicalvolume. Also, because the block-based storage system may only acceptread and writes at a primary node, future read and write requests willbe directed to the newly promoted primary node.

At 1008, the newly promoted primary node provides the newly authorizedsequence number and associated updated membership group information toother members of the membership group, such as other secondary nodes.

At 1010, the newly promoted primary node may provide the newlyauthorized sequence number and associated updated membership groupinformation to client computing devices of the logical volume.

FIG. 11 is a flow diagram illustrating a process followed by amembership group authority, according to some embodiments.

At 1102, a membership group authority stores a current sequence numberfor a membership group for a logical volume, wherein the membershipgroup defines which of a plurality of computing devices of a block-basedstorage system store a primary replica of the logical volume and asecondary replica of the logical volume.

At 1104, the membership group authority receives a proposed sequencenumber and associated updated membership group information for aparticular logical volume or logical volume partition.

At 1106, the membership group authority determines whether the proposedsequence number is a next larger sequence number in a sequence (e.g. isit larger than the most recent sequence number by “1”) and whether ornot the proposed sequence number has already been authorized for thelogical volume. If the sequence number is out of order or alreadyauthorized, at 1108, the membership group authority declines toauthorize the proposed sequence number.

If the proposed sequence number is the next larger sequence number inthe sequence and not already authorized, at 1110 the membership groupauthority authorizes the proposed sequence number.

FIG. 12 is a flow diagram illustrating a connection request flowfollowed by a client computing device, according to some embodiments.

At 1202, a client computing device attempts to connect or re-connect toa computing device of a block-based storage service storing a primaryreplica for a logical volume (e.g. a primary node). At 1204, the clientcomputing device determines whether the primary node is available toreceive the request (e.g. does the request time out?). Also, at 1206,the client computing device determines whether the request was declined.If the request is accepted, at 1208, the client computing deviceestablishes a connection with the primary node.

If the primary node was unavailable at 1204 or declined the request toconnect at 1206, the client computing device at 1210 attempts to connectto a computing device of the block-based storage service storing asecondary replica for the logical volume (e.g. a secondary node). Insome embodiments, a node declining a connection request may provide aclient computing device with updated membership group information and alatest associated sequence number. For example, if a client computingdevice attempts to connect with a very stale sequence number (e.g. morethan 1 sequence number less than a latest sequence number), the nodebeing contacted for connection may provide the client computing devicewith the latest sequence number and associated membership groupinformation. This may prevent the client computing device fromattempting to connect to a secondary node indicated in the client'sstale membership group information that has most likely also beensuperseded.

At 1212, the client computing device determines whether the secondarynode is available to receive the request (e.g. does the request timeout?). Also, at 1214, the client computing device determines whether therequest to the secondary node was declined. If the request is accepted,at 1216, the client computing device establishes a connection with thesecondary node, which will cause the secondary node to propose a newsequence number to assume the role of primary node.

If the secondary node is unavailable to receive a connection request ordeclines a connection request (at 1212 or 1214), in some embodiments,the client computing device may request from a membership groupauthority a latest sequence number for the logical volume and associatedupdated membership group information associated with the latest sequencenumber. The client computing device may then attempt to connect to aprimary or a secondary node indicated in the latest updated membershipgroup information received from the membership group authority. In someembodiments, a secondary node may provide updated membership groupinformation and a latest sequence number in response declining aconnection request.

FIG. 13 is a block diagram illustrating an example computer system,according to various embodiments. For example, computer system 1300 maybe configured to implement storage and/or compute nodes of a computecluster, a data stores, and/or a client, in different embodiments.Computer system 1300 may be any of various types of devices, including,but not limited to, a personal computer system, desktop computer, laptopor notebook computer, mainframe computer system, handheld computer,workstation, network computer, a consumer device, application server,storage device, telephone, mobile telephone, or in general any type ofcomputing device.

Computer system 1300 includes one or more processors 1310 (any of whichmay include multiple cores, which may be single or multi-threaded)coupled to a system memory 1320 via an input/output (I/O) interface1330. Computer system 1300 further includes a network interface 1340coupled to I/O interface 1330. In various embodiments, computer system1300 may be a uniprocessor system including one processor 1310, or amultiprocessor system including several processors 1310 (e.g., two,four, eight, or another suitable number). Processors 1310 may be anysuitable processors capable of executing instructions. For example, invarious embodiments, processors 1310 may be general-purpose or embeddedprocessors implementing any of a variety of instruction setarchitectures (ISAs), such as the x86, PowerPC, SPARC, or MIPS ISAs, orany other suitable ISA. In multiprocessor systems, each of processors1310 may commonly, but not necessarily, implement the same ISA. Thecomputer system 1300 also includes one or more network communicationdevices (e.g., network interface 1340) for communicating with othersystems and/or components over a communications network (e.g. Internet,LAN, etc.).

In the illustrated embodiment, computer system 1300 also includes one ormore persistent storage devices 1360 and/or one or more I/O devices1380. In various embodiments, persistent storage devices 1360 maycorrespond to disk drives, tape drives, solid state memory, other massstorage devices, block-based storage devices, or any other persistentstorage device. Computer system 1300 (or a distributed application oroperating system operating thereon) may store instructions and/or datain persistent storage devices 1360, as desired, and may retrieve thestored instruction and/or data as needed. For example, in someembodiments, computer system 1300 may host a storage system server node,and persistent storage 1360 may include the SSDs attached to that servernode.

Computer system 1300 includes one or more system memories 1320 that areconfigured to store instructions and data accessible by processor(s)1310. In various embodiments, system memories 1320 may be implementedusing any suitable memory technology, (e.g., one or more of cache,static random access memory (SRAM), DRAM, RDRAM, EDO RAM, DDR 10 RAM,synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM), Rambus RAM, EEPROM,non-volatile/Flash-type memory, or any other type of memory). Systemmemory 1320 may contain program instructions 1325 that are executable byprocessor(s) 1310 to implement the methods and techniques describedherein. In various embodiments, program instructions 1325 may be encodedin platform native binary, any interpreted language such as Java™byte-code, or in any other language such as C/C++, Java™, etc., or inany combination thereof. For example, in the illustrated embodiment,program instructions 1325 include program instructions executable toimplement the functionality of a resource host, in differentembodiments. In some embodiments, program instructions 1325 mayimplement multiple separate clients, nodes, and/or other components.

In some embodiments, program instructions 1325 may include instructionsexecutable to implement an operating system (not shown), which may beany of various operating systems, such as UNIX, LINUX, Solaris™, MacOS™,Windows™, etc. Any or all of program instructions 1325 may be providedas a computer program product, or software, that may include anon-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored thereoninstructions, which may be used to program a computer system (or otherelectronic devices) to perform a process according to variousembodiments. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium mayinclude any mechanism for storing information in a form (e.g., software,processing application) readable by a machine (e.g., a computer).Generally speaking, a non-transitory computer-accessible medium mayinclude computer-readable storage media or memory media such as magneticor optical media, e.g., disk or DVD/CD-ROM coupled to computer system1300 via I/O interface 1330. A non-transitory computer-readable storagemedium may also include any volatile or non-volatile media such as RAM(e.g. SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, RDRAM, SRAM, etc.), ROM, etc., that may beincluded in some embodiments of computer system 1300 as system memory1320 or another type of memory. In other embodiments, programinstructions may be communicated using optical, acoustical or other formof propagated signal (e.g., carrier waves, infrared signals, digitalsignals, etc.) conveyed via a communication medium such as a networkand/or a wireless link, such as may be implemented via network interface1340.

In some embodiments, system memory 1320 may include data store 1345,which may be configured as described herein. In general, system memory1320 (e.g., data store 1345 within system memory 1320), persistentstorage 1360, and/or remote storage 1370 may store data blocks, replicasof data blocks, metadata associated with data blocks and/or their state,configuration information, and/or any other information usable inimplementing the methods and techniques described herein.

In one embodiment, I/O interface 1330 may be configured to coordinateI/O traffic between processor 1310, system memory 1320 and anyperipheral devices in the system, including through network interface1340 or other peripheral interfaces. In some embodiments, I/O interface1330 may perform any necessary protocol, timing or other datatransformations to convert data signals from one component (e.g., systemmemory 1320) into a format suitable for use by another component (e.g.,processor 1310). In some embodiments, I/O interface 1330 may includesupport for devices attached through various types of peripheral buses,such as a variant of the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) busstandard or the Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard, for example. Insome embodiments, the function of I/O interface 1330 may be split intotwo or more separate components, such as a north bridge and a southbridge, for example. Also, in some embodiments, some or all of thefunctionality of I/O interface 1330, such as an interface to systemmemory 1320, may be incorporated directly into processor 1310.

Network interface 1340 may be configured to allow data to be exchangedbetween computer system 1300 and other devices attached to a network,such as other computer systems 1390, for example. In addition, networkinterface 1340 may be configured to allow communication between computersystem 1300 and various I/O devices 1350 and/or remote storage 1370.Input/output devices 1350 may, in some embodiments, include one or moredisplay terminals, keyboards, keypads, touchpads, scanning devices,voice or optical recognition devices, or any other devices suitable forentering or retrieving data by one or more computer systems 1300.Multiple input/output devices 1350 may be present in computer system1300 or may be distributed on various nodes of a distributed system thatincludes computer system 1300. In some embodiments, similar input/outputdevices may be separate from computer system 1300 and may interact withone or more nodes of a distributed system that includes computer system1300 through a wired or wireless connection, such as over networkinterface 1340. Network interface 1340 may commonly support one or morewireless networking protocols (e.g., Wi-Fi/IEEE 802.11, or anotherwireless networking standard). However, in various embodiments, networkinterface 1340 may support communication via any suitable wired orwireless general data networks, such as other types of Ethernetnetworks, for example. Additionally, network interface 1340 may supportcommunication via telecommunications/telephony networks such as analogvoice networks or digital fiber communications networks, via storagearea networks such as Fibre Channel SANs, or via any other suitable typeof network and/or protocol. In various embodiments, computer system 1300may include more, fewer, or different components than those illustratedin FIG. 13 (e.g., displays, video cards, audio cards, peripheraldevices, other network interfaces such as an ATM interface, an Ethernetinterface, a Frame Relay interface, etc.)

It is noted that any of the distributed system embodiments describedherein, or any of their components, may be implemented as one or morenetwork-based services. For example, a compute cluster within acomputing service may present computing and/or storage services and/orother types of services that employ the distributed computing systemsdescribed herein to clients as network-based services. In someembodiments, a network-based service may be implemented by a softwareand/or hardware system designed to support interoperablemachine-to-machine interaction over a network. A network-based servicemay have an interface described in a machine-processable format, such asthe Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Other systems may interactwith the network-based service in a manner prescribed by the descriptionof the network-based service's interface. For example, the network-basedservice may define various operations that other systems may invoke, andmay define a particular application programming interface (API) to whichother systems may be expected to conform when requesting the variousoperations. though

In various embodiments, a network-based service may be requested orinvoked through the use of a message that includes parameters and/ordata associated with the network-based services request. Such a messagemay be formatted according to a particular markup language such asExtensible Markup Language (XML), and/or may be encapsulated using aprotocol such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). To perform anetwork-based services request, a network-based services client mayassemble a message including the request and convey the message to anaddressable endpoint (e.g., a Uniform Resource Locator (URL))corresponding to the network-based service, using an Internet-basedapplication layer transfer protocol such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol(HTTP).

In some embodiments, network-based services may be implemented usingRepresentational State Transfer (“RESTful”) techniques rather thanmessage-based techniques. For example, a network-based serviceimplemented according to a RESTful technique may be invoked throughparameters included within an HTTP method such as PUT, GET, or DELETE,rather than encapsulated within a SOAP message.

Although the embodiments above have been described in considerabledetail, numerous variations and modifications may be made as wouldbecome apparent to those skilled in the art once the above disclosure isfully appreciated. It is intended that the following claims beinterpreted to embrace all such modifications and changes and,accordingly, the above description to be regarded in an illustrativerather than a restrictive sense.

What is claimed is:
 1. A block storage system configured to host a plurality of logical volumes and to allow multiple virtual machine clients to connect to a given logical volume, the block storage system comprising: a first computing device storing a primary replica of a logical volume, wherein the first computing device is configured to accept connections from a plurality of virtual machine clients to enable the plurality of virtual machine clients to perform I/O operations with respect to data of the logical volume; and a second computing device storing a secondary replica of the logical volume, wherein secondary replica receives replicated writes to the data of the logical volume from the primary replica, and wherein at least one computing device of the block storage system implementing a control plane is configured to implement a membership group authority for the block storage system, wherein the membership authority is configured to: store a current sequence number for a membership group for the logical volume, wherein the membership group defines which of a plurality of computing devices of the block storage system store the primary replica of the logical volume and a secondary replica of the logical volume; authorize a new sequence number for an updated version of the membership group due to a change in membership of the computing devices of the block storage system included in the membership group for the logical volume; and decline to authorize a new sequence number if a sequence number submitted with a request for the new sequence number is less than or equal to a greatest authorized sequence number previously authorized for the logical volume, wherein respective computing devices of the membership group for the logical volume are configured to: locally store a latest sequence number for the membership group authorized by the membership group authority that has been presented to the respective computing device; and verify that a sequence number included in a communication directed to the respective computing device from one or more other computing devices of the membership group or from the first or the second client computing devices includes the latest sequence number for the logical volume locally stored by the respective computing device.
 2. The block storage system of claim 1, wherein the respective computing devices of the membership group for the logical volume are configured to: decline to perform a read request or a write request received from one of the virtual machine clients, in response to failing to verify that a sequence number locally stored by other membership group members matches the latest sequence number for the logical volume locally stored by the respective computing device.
 3. The system of claim 1, wherein a first computing device of the block storage system storing the primary replica or a computing device of the block storage system storing the secondary replica for the logical volume is configured to: send to one or more of the virtual machine clients, information comprising the latest sequence number for the logical volume authorized by the membership group authority that has been presented to the respective computing device and information indicating a membership of the membership group associated with the latest sequence number, wherein the one or more virtual machine clients, in response to a read request or a write request being declined by the first computing device storing the primary replica, requests connection to another computing device of the block storage system indicated in the information indicating the membership of the membership group associated with the latest sequence number for the logical volume.
 4. The system of claim 3, wherein a first computing device storing the primary replica is configured to: send the information comprising the latest sequence number and the information indicating the membership of the membership group associated with the latest sequence number to one of the virtual machine clients in response to receiving a connection request from the virtual machine client, wherein the virtual machine client, in response to receiving the latest sequence number and information indicating the membership of the membership group associated with the latest sequence number, requests connection to another computing device of the block storage system indicated in the information indicating the membership of the membership group associated with the latest sequence number for the logical volume as storing the primary replica for the logical volume.
 5. The system of claim 3, wherein a computing device storing the secondary replica for the logical volume is configured to: present, in response to receiving a connection request from one of the virtual machine clients, to the membership group authority, a request for authorization of a proposed new sequence number that is greater than the largest sequence number locally stored by the computing device storing the secondary replica; and in response to the membership group authority authorizing the new proposed sequence number as a new sequence number for an updated membership group, locally store the new sequence number and updated membership group information associated with the new sequence number; and provide the new sequence number and the updated membership group information to other members of the updated membership group.
 6. The system of claim 1, wherein in response to a receiving a read request, a first computing device storing the primary replica is configured to: send a request to a computing device storing the secondary replica indicating a latest sequence number for the logical volume stored locally at the first computing device storing the primary replica; and refrain from sending requested read data to a requesting virtual machine client until receiving an indication from the computing device storing the secondary replica that the latest sequence number stored locally at the first computing device has not been superseded by a latest sequence number locally stored for the logical volume by the computing device storing the secondary replica.
 7. A method, comprising: receiving a read request at a first computing device storing a primary replica for a logical volume; sending a verification request to a second computing device storing a secondary replica for the logical volume, wherein the request causes the first computing device or the second computing device to verify that a sequence number locally stored at the first computing device for the logical volume corresponds with a sequence number locally stored at the second computing device for the logical volume; and refraining from sending requested read data in response to the read request until the first or second computing device verifies that the sequence number for the logical volume locally stored at the first computing device storing the primary replica corresponds with the sequence number for the logical volume stored locally on the second computing device storing the secondary replica.
 8. The method of claim 7, wherein the first computing device storing the primary replica refrains from sending the requested read data until all members of a membership group associated with the sequence number locally stored at the first computing device have been verified to locally store sequence numbers that correspond with the sequence number locally stored at the first computing device.
 9. The method of claim 7, further comprising: receiving a write request at the first computing device storing the primary replica for the logical volume sending a replication request to the second computing device storing the secondary replica for the logical volume, wherein the replication request includes a sequence number locally stored at the first computing device for the logical volume; and refraining from committing write data included in the write request until the computing device storing the secondary replica verifies that the sequence number included with the replication request corresponds with the sequence number for the logical volume stored locally on the computing device storing the secondary replica.
 10. The method of claim 7, further comprising: receiving, at the second computing device storing the secondary replica for the logical volume, a request from a client computing device requesting to connect to the logical volume via the second computing device; proposing, by the second computing device, an incremented sequence number to a membership group authority, wherein the incremented sequence number is larger than a largest sequence number for the logical volume locally stored by the second computing device; and in response to receiving, from the membership group authority, an indication that the proposed sequence number has been authorized as a new sequence number for the logical volume, assuming, by the second computing device, a role of primary replica for the logical volume.
 11. The method of claim 10, wherein assuming the role of primary replica for the logical volume comprises: providing the new sequence number authorized by the membership group authority and an updated membership of a membership group associated with the new sequence number to other computing devices included in the membership group.
 12. The method of claim 10, further comprising: receiving, at the first computing device, a request from a different client computing device requesting to connect to the logical volume via the first computing device; proposing, by the first computing device, prior to receiving the new sequence number authorized by the membership group authority and provided to the second computing device, an incremented sequence number that is larger than a largest sequence number for the logical volume locally stored by the first computing device; and in response to receiving from the membership group authority an indication that the proposed sequence number has been rejected, discontinuing an attempt by the first computing device to assume the role of primary replica for the logical volume.
 13. The method of claim 7, wherein the sequence number and the new sequence number authorized by the membership group authority are monotonically increasing integers.
 14. The method of claim 7, wherein the first computing device and the second computing device are computing devices of a plurality of computing devices that implement a block storage system, wherein the first client computing device and the second client computing device are respective computing instances of a virtual computing service, and wherein the block storage system provides block storage spanning multiple ones of the plurality of computing devices of the block storage system while appearing to respective computing instances of a plurality of distinct computing instances as one or more remote logical storage volumes configured to receive block level storage requests from the respective ones of the plurality of distinct computing instances.
 15. The method of claim 7, further comprising: implementing, by one or more additional computing devices, a membership group authority configured to: store a current sequence number for a membership group for the logical volume, wherein the membership group defines which of a plurality of computing devices of a block storage system store the primary replica of the logical volume and/or a secondary replica of the logical volume; authorize a new sequence number for an updated version of the membership group due to a change in membership of the computing devices included in the membership group; and decline to authorize a new sequence number if a sequence number submitted with a request for the new sequence number is less than or equal to a greatest authorized sequence number previously authorized for the logical volume.
 16. One or more non-transitory, computer-readable storage media storing instructions that, when executed on or across one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: propose a sequence number for a membership group for a logical volume to a membership group authority, wherein the proposed sequence number is greater than a greatest sequence locally stored for the logical volume; receive an indication from the membership group authority that the proposed sequence number has been authorized for the logical volume as a new sequence number, wherein the new sequence number is associated with a membership group for the logical volume; provide the sequence number and information about the associated membership group to the members of the membership group for the logical volume, wherein the members of the membership group store replicas of the logical volume.
 17. The one or more non-transitory, computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the program instructions further cause the one or more processors to: provide the sequence number and information about the associated membership group to two or more client computing devices configured to attach to the logical volume.
 18. The one or more non-transitory, computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the program instructions further cause the one or more processors to: receive a read request directed to the logical volume; send a request to a separate computing device storing a secondary replica for the logical volume, wherein the request includes a locally stored sequence number; and refrain from providing requested read data until the separate computing device storing the secondary replica provides an indication that the locally stored sequence number corresponds with a sequence number for the logical volume stored locally on the separate computing device storing the secondary replica.
 19. The one or more non-transitory, computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the program instructions further cause the one or more processors to: in response to receiving health information indicating that the first computing device remains attached to the first client computing device or at least one of one or more additional client computing devices: refrain from proposing a new sequence number to the membership group authority to attempt to assume a role of primary replica for the logical volume.
 20. The one or more non-transitory, computer-readable storage media of claim 16, wherein the program instructions cause the one or more processors to: in response to receiving, from the membership group authority, an indication that the proposed sequence number is not authorized because it has already been authorized to another computing device for the logical volume; discontinue an attempt to assume a role of primary replica for the logical volume. 